which I will do next week, but in the meantime, there is a spectacular weekend of crime at MAYHEM IN THE HAMPTONS - at the great indies run by BOOKHAMPTON - so come out and talk books.  My first panel is at 2pm in East Hampton - 41 Main Street - on NYC as a character in my books - and the second panel is at 4pm - as I introduce three of my favorite debut novelists:  Karen Bergreen, Hilary Davidson, and Cara Hoffman.  It’s a great weekend of events - won’t you come?

As my readers know, there’s nothing about the publishing process that I like more than the moment the books come out of the boxes and onto the bookshelves at stores and libraries.  I get the opportunity to dash around the country and talk to everyone and anyone who shows up, see my favorite booksellers, raise funds for libraries.  It’s all good.  So on March 1, in case you missed it in hardcover, HELL GATE appears in paperback.  And on Tuesday, March 8th, the brand new SILENT MERCY hits the street!   You can find me talking with DON IMUS on Monday the 7th, see me on THE TODAY SHOW on March 8th, again on CNN’s AMERICAN MORNING on March 9th, and on March 11, deep in conversation with JOAN HAMBURG, broadcast live from the famed restaurant, 21!  Check the site for the tour - Manhattan to Pittsburgh to DC to Huntingot, LI to Brooklyn, to Houston, to Atlanta, to Coral Gables, to Del Ray, to Naples, to Fort Myers, to Denver, to Boulder, to Scottsdale and on to Los Angeles.  Come say hello!

Come take a look!  The SILENT MERCY website has launched, thanks to my brilliant and beloved webmaster.  Look and listen - and please check out the tour - many dates being added all throughout April and May…and do feel free to pre-order a copy from your favorite bookseller.  Cheers!

I often say that my favorite period of time is after I hand in the final edit of a novel…and before the first reviews appear.  It’s like a grace period…there is nothing I can change, no matter how much I’d like to, and the critics haven’t come at me yet.   Well, SILENT MERCY is off to a very generous pre-pub birth, and since many of you don’t get the trade reviews….here they are.

The first to arrive was LIBRARY JOURNAL (and you know how much I love libraries, so this is so important to me)… “Fairstein’s newest thriller commences at the scene of a grisly fire at a historic Harlem Baptist church.  Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper and NYPD colleagues Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace investigate the badly burned and beheaded body of a woman on the porch of the church behind a locked gate.  After a second corpse is found mutilated at a landmark Catholic cathedral and a recent unsolved murder in a Kentucky Pentecostal church is discovered, possible connections among the victims arise.  Before another dies, can Cooper and her colleagues apprehend this killer who is literally and figuratively silencing women?  Fairstein’s 30 years as a New York City prosecutor and a gift for suspense have enabled her to craft a riveting novel that thrusts readers into the darker side of religion and bigotry against the backdrop of some of New York’s oldest churches.  VERDICT:  The 13th entry in Fairstein’s series is a tightly wound mystery that delivers an adrenaline rush with its faced-paced, nail biting manhunt across several states.”  (Written by Mary Todd Chestnut of Northern Kentucky University Library).

And the very next day, the PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY review appeared:  “In Fairstein’s exciting 13th novel to feature NYC Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper, a middle of the night call brings Alex and NYPD detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace to Harlem, where the decapitated body of a young woman has been burning on the steps of the Mount Neboh Baptist Church, originally a synagogue until the neighborhood changed.  Initially, the authorities expected a hate crime, until another dead woman turns up at a cathedral in Little Italy a few days later.  A religious motive emerges. especially since both victims were considered ‘outcasts’ because of their uncompromising demands about the role of women in organized religion.  Meanwhile, Alex is prosecuting a defrocked Catholic priest accused of molesting boys, a high-profile trial that a politically connected bishop wants stopped.  Fairstein excels at describing New York’s complicated religious history as well as the vagaries of the city’s legal and religious politics.”

I’m ready to unpack those boxes and get the books on library and bookshop shelves!  march 8!

You’re right!  Thanks for all the messages asking about  the upcoming SILENT MERCY tour - yes!  Coop and Chapman are back and will be on the shelves of bookstores and libraries very soon.  The launch date is March 8…..on the TODAY SHOW….and I’ll be making appearances throughout that day in NYC - national and local media - with a talk that evening at the new Upper East Side Barnes and Noble.  Then….on the road….details will be on the site within two weeks…here are the stops!   Pittsburgh, Washington DC, Huntington LI, Brooklyn, Houston, Atlanta, Coral Gables, Fort Lauderdale, Naples, Fort Myers (To keynote the reading festival on March 19th), Denver, Boulder, Phoenix, Los Angeles…then home to breathe.  In April, there will be a conference in Palm Beach…then lots of events in the tri-State area for libraries and other good causes.  So I hope to see you on the road…check the site soon for all the details.  Happy reading…

Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving as much as I did - one of my favorite holidays.  Most of us know Al Roker through the TV screen - and many of us have had the great pleasure to get to call him a friend throughout the years he has entertained us in so many ways (and that goes for his fabulous - smart and gorgeous - wife, Deborah Roberts).  In addition to his generosity to other writers he interviews, Al has started a series of crime novels - and the second one is just out:  THE MORNING SHOW MURDERS - featuring Al’s clever, funny, charming-as-his-creator sleuth, Billy Blessing.  I loved the first in the series - it has a very distinctive voice, and you’ll recognize it as Al’s, which I always love in a novel by someone we ‘know.’  And now I’m just diving into the new one, and I invite you to do the same.  Here’s another classy thing about Al - and I learned this trait first from the late Stephen Cannell.  Many times when writers are at events, they’re asked who they like to read, and as Cannell said to his audiences - many novelists are so envious of their competitors that they always name dead authors.  He chose always to credit his favorite thriving crime novelists, and it’s a wonderfully classy thing to do.   Al shares that great generosity of spirit.  In an interview this week in the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Al was enthusiastic about his faves - Carl Hiassen and Janet Evanovich as masters of comic mystery - Lee Child, Harlan Coben and Walter Mosley.  Al is a prince - you’ve seen him on the tube, now read one of his novels -  you’ll have a very good time.  I have it on good authority that he also ran the NYC marathon this month - now that’s spectacular.  Back to the book….

I know that many of you have been following the new series on ID (Investigation Discovery) television.  Every Monday at 9, some of my favorite crime writers have been narrating stories of true cases that have captivated or motivated them to write.  The series led off with a riveting evening with David Baldacci, who took us back to a murder in Washington DC that linked to the White House….and has never been solved.  Sandra Brown, Lisa Scottoline and so many others are taking part.  I hope you’ll check in tomorrow night - November 1st at 9pm - for the story of the mother/son grifter team whose murderous crimes took them from coast to coast, and resulted in the death of a New York woman in her Upper East Side mansion.  The prosecution team - some of my dearest and most well-respected friends in the Manhattan DA’s Office - mounted a brilliant case to charge Sante and Kenneth Kimes with murder….even though the body of Irene Silverman has never been found.  I hope you’ll tune in.

My long summer hiatus is behind me and it’s a perfect day to be back on the blog to begin the fall.  Since we last talked, I’ve finished all the heavy lifting on SILENT MERCY, which will be published on March 8, 2011 (a week after the paperback debut of HELL GATE), and was most delightfully honored to receive the SILVER BULLET AWARD from my friends at INTERNATIONAL THRILLER WRITERS.  There will be lots of news to come - and to come more regularly, and if you want to read what I have to say (seriously say) about ending the backlog of rape evidence collection kits in this country - and my project with Mariska Hargitay…you’ll find it on today’s DAILY BEAST   www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-28/how-unexamined-rape-kits-could-solve-countless-crimes/  and get on board with ending the backlog.

Imagine Wilie Nelson singing “On the Road Again….” in the background, because that’s the music I hear in my head as I answer the 4am wake-up calls to get to the airport for the 6:45am flights.  The tour has been fantastic - so far, since the launch on March 9 - I’ve done New York City, Boston, DC, Richmond, Denver, Phoenix-Scottsdale, Houston, Dallas, Memphis…and home yesterday.  Off to New Canaan later today (but it’s spring and it’s glorious here…) and then to Palm Beach tomorrow.  Meanwhile the good news for HELL GATE is that it debuts on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list (on your doorstep next Sunday) at #9!!!!!!!!!!  It is nationally at this very moment #7 at Barnes and Noble….every single one of them in the USA…where it is also #1 in mysteries/thrillers!!!!!!!!!  And tomorrow it hits the stands as #10 in Publishers’ Weekly.  So thanks a million and come on out to say hello - I’ll be signing and traveling all spring.

If you missed my long chat with Don Imus today, you can find in my press room….and tune in to TODAY at 9:30 for my interview with AL ROKER…how lucky can I be?  A great guy, and now a terrific crime writer…and oh, if you’re anywhere near a New York Times, check out the full page ad on the rear of the main section.  BLAST-OFF!  The books come out of their boxes and I hit the road and how I do love this point in time.  See you along the way…