HOLY CHOW

Adopting Lion, an adorable chow, from Paterson lawyer Andy Carpenter’s Tara Foundation isn’t enough to keep an unassuming billionaire alive.

Rachel Morehouse didn’t earn all that money herself; she inherited it from her husband, private equity mogul Stanley Wasserman. But once she replaced him as the power behind Wasserman Equities, she began making forward-looking arrangements: asking Andy how he’d feel about taking Lion back if her stepson, Anthony Wasserman, didn’t want him; getting better acquainted with Tony, who’d moved to Indiana after feuding with his father years ago; and learning more about how the foundation works. When an autopsy reveals that Rachel died from an injection of potassium chloride, prosecutor Kathryn Strickland, recently arrived from Delaware, assumes the second of these activities, which brought Tony under Rachel’s capacious roof for the last three weeks of her life, was to blame. But Andy, suspecting that the third activity was responsible, arranges to have all his usual helpers, from investigator Corey Douglas to the Bubeleh Brigade of seniors, take a long, hard look under the hood of Wasserman Equities. They’re still looking when the starting gun begins Tony’s trial and Andy has to scramble to hold his own against the unexpectedly sharp and resourceful Strickland. As usual in Andy’s recent outings, the courtroom battles involving the two lawyers and the trial judge are a lot more engaging than the mystery of Rachel Morehouse’s death, the obligatory large-scale criminal conspiracy, the rapidly escalating body count, or the surprisingly muted conclusion.

Still, here’s Andy, and over there, in the distance, is yet another dog. What else could you want?