Silent Mercy

Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Linda Fairstein is at her explosive best as she plunges into the byzantine world of New York City’s most powerful and sacred institutions—and unearths the most sinister of secrets… Prosecutor Alexandra Cooper has been called to a Harlem Baptist Church, where a woman has been decapitated and set on fire on the church steps—with the imprint of a Star of David necklace seared into her flesh. Then a second body is found at a cathedral in Little Italy. Alex is blind to the sick and inconceivable motives feeding a particularly vicious serial killer—until she mines the depths of the city’s vast and serpentine religious history. What Alex follows is a dangerous path that takes her far beyond the scope of her investigation, and directly into the path of a frightening and inescapable truth.