NIGHT WATCH

Wouldn’t you love to know what was really going on in the Manhattan D.A.’s office during the weeks the case against a certain very prominent French politician, accused of raping a chambermaid in a midtown hotel, was coming apart? Wecome to NIGHT WATCH, Linda Fairstein’s most richly plotted novel maybe ever. Barbara Rosenblat gives a riveting performance of special crimes prosecutor Alex Cooper, torn between her French lover, celebrity restaurateur Luc Rouget (who contributes a particularly interesting restaurant business subplot), and the demands of her job while her boss’s extremely high-profile rape case blows up in not-very-slow motion. Rosenblat’s French voices are convincing; her tough-guy cop Mike Chapman, Alex’s best friend, speaks in deliciously tough-tender New Yawkese; and, as always, her pacing is an irresistible force. B.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2012]