Linda Fairstein 'dropped' by agent ICM

Ex-District Attorney Linda Fairstein’s US agent ICM has reportedly cut ties with her following the fall-out from the Netflix show about the wrongful prosecution of the Central Park Five.

The author and former Manhattan Deputy District Attorney was dropped by her US publisher Dutton and UK publisher Little, Brown earlier this week over the controversy over her involvement in the Central Park Jogger case. Her relationship with ICM agency in New York has now been terminated, Deadline has reported.

Co-agency Curtis Brown has so far declined to comment. Fairstein is still listed as a client on the Curtis Brown website and described as “one of America’s foremost legal experts on crimes of sexual abuse and domestic violence” with ICM executive v.p. Esther Newberg listed as a contact. Newberg has not responded to The Bookseller’s request for comment.

New Netflix mini-series "When They See Us", directed by Ava DuVernay, has returned attention to the wrongful conviction of the Central Park Five for the rape of a female jogger in 1989. The teenagers were exonerated in 2002. At the time the five teenagers were charged with the attack, Fairstein was the top Manhattan sexual crimes prosecutor.

Fairstein has claimed in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that the Netflix dramatisation of the case defames her. She said the show is “so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication”

Additionally, in a discussion on the Authors Guild message board about whether it was appropriate for Fairstein’s publishers to drop her, Fairstein herself commented, arguing with other members, it was reported by Vulture. “I would like you and the group to know more about the actual facts, if not of the case, then of the outright falsehoods in the DuVernay movie that started this other storm,” she wrote in one message. “I seem to remember that Salman Rushdie’s publisher stayed with him through a FATWA.”

In another message, Fairstein said that the four-part TV series is “not where the facts are” and contains “inflammatory falsehoods.”

Dutton has published more than 20 best-selling crime novels from the attorney over the past 25 years. Fairstein's latest novel from the crime and middle-grade author, Blood Oath, was published by Little, Brown in March and is the latest in the Alex Cooper crime series following the cases of the Manhattan Assistant District Attorney for the Sex Crimes Unit. Fairstein has sold around 774,714 books for £4.12m according to Nielsen BookScan with her bestseller Entombed (Little, Brown), at 75,872 copies sold.