DOGGED PURSUIT

Andy Carpenter’s first case.

Actually, it’s his second case; he’s already gotten the charges against a sex worker tossed by threatening to subpoena a list of her well-connected clients. Andy, who’s not yet the millionaire he’ll be in the future, has just left the Passaic County district attorney’s office and set up shop as a criminal defense attorney when he gets sucked into not one but three murders. Someone’s blown up Stephen Pearson’s car with Pearson, the owner of Pearson Trucking, and two employees widely assumed to be collateral damage, inside. Suspicion’s naturally fallen on Ryan Tierney, the longtime friend Pearson had just fired, since he’s publicly vowed revenge and happens to know a good deal about explosives. When Andy visits Tierney in prison and offers to temporarily take in his dog, Sonny, who’s been placed in a shelter, along with Tara, a golden retriever who’s bonded with Sonny, Tierney asks him to snatch the case from the overworked public defender, and Andy can’t say no. Despite his struggles to adjust to his new job, Andy acquits himself well in and outside of the courtroom as he tries to answer the riddle of why loan shark Jason Shore would have pumped $2 million into Pearson Trucking, none of which had been repaid, and the identification of the killer will surprise most readers. But they’ll cheer even more when Andy, who’s still more or less married to heiress Nicole Gant, meets investigator Laurie Collins, his future wife, and Tara, his forever dog, for the first time. Still in the future: his initial encounters with strong-arm Marcus Clark and his imperishably opaque secretary, Edna.

A prequel fans will cherish as the origin story of Paterson, New Jersey’s snarkiest lawyer.