Head of the Sex Crimes Unit of the district attorney's office in Manhattan for decades, Linda Fairstein is America's most visible legal expert on sexual assault and domestic violence-which is why she writes some of the most compelling crime thrillers of our time and why her Alexandra Cooper series has been topping bestseller list for more than a decade. Fans turn to Fairstein for ripped-from-the-headline crimes, cutting-edge investigations, and vindication for victims. Linda Fairstein brings readers inside a world of which they can't get enough, but one they hope to never see in real life.

And for her twelfth novel, Fairstein takes Alexandra Cooper inside a world she'd rather not see.

New York City politics have always been filled with intrigue and behind- the-scenes deals. In Hell Gate, Alex finds her attention torn between investigating a shipwreck that has contraband cargo-human cargo-and the political sex scandal of a promising New York congressman now fallen from grace. When Alex discovers that a woman from the wreck and the congressman's lover have the same rose tattoo-the brand of a ""snakehead"", a master of a human trafficking operation-it dawns on her that these cases aren't as unrelated as they seem and that the entire political landscape of New York City could hang in the balance of her investigation. As Alex looks on at the nameless victims in the morgue, she realizes she's looking at the present- day face of New York's long, dark tradition of human trafficking-a tradition that began hundreds of years ago with slave trade from Africa, now a multimillion-dollar industry that will stop at no cost, even if that cost is Alex's life.