City of Lies by Alafair Burke

Paperback:  In NYC, nights are dangerous.  Days are numbered.

When New York University sophomore Megan Gunther is brutally murdered, NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and partner J J Rogan discover that Megan had been on the receiving end of some sinister online threats posted to a website specializing in campus gossip.  Is her death the result of a campus feud that got out of hand or could there be a twisted cyber fanatic at work?

But when a link is revealed between Megan and a murdered real-estate agent who was living a dangerous double life, Ellie comes to wonder if there was something else behind the student's death.  Even more significantly, Ellie learns that the dead woman shared a secret connection to a celebrity entrepreneur whose bodyguard was mysteriously killed a few months earlier.

And when Megan's roommate goes missing too, the hunt for the killer is really on.

With fans including everyone from Harlan Coben and Michael Connelly to Lisa Gardner and Laura Lippman, Alafair Burke's City of Lies aka 212 (2010) is the third book in the nail-biting NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher thriller series.

About the author:  Alafair Burke is the author of what the Sun-Sentinel has hailed as "two power house series" featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and Portland Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid.  Alafair's novels grow out of her love for writing, her experience as a prosecutor in America's police precincts and criminal courtrooms, and her ability to create strong, believable, and eminently likable female characters.  According to Entertainment Weekly, Alafair "is a terrific web spinner" who "knows when and how to drop clues to keep readers at her mercy."

A graduate of Stanford Law School and a former Deputy District Attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair is now a Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School, where she teaches criminal law and procedure.  She is the daughter of the acclaimed crime writer James Lee Burke.

Alafair is often asked about the origin of her name, especially by readers who are familiar with the fictional character, Alafair Robicheaux, featured in her father's novels.  Alafair was named for her father's maternal grandmother.  It was a more common name in the United States, particularly the south, at the turn of the twentieth century.  Now it is a name that belongs to her, two of her cousins, and, from what she can find on Google, ten cats, two dogs, an alpaca, and a boat.

Rating:  5/5