In vigorous and full-bodied prose, Tanenbaum gives dimension to a large cast of characters and holds your interest—even when...
Long-running series hero Butch Karp prosecutes a young rapper for murder while wife Marlene seeks spiritual peace in New Mexico. Both get more than they bargained for.
As righteous Karp (Resolved, 2003, etc.) contemplates a dive into the dirty world of politics with a run for New York District Attorney, challenges both professional and personal confront him. After an altercation stemming from a rap duel at the midtown Hip-Hop Nightclub, black rap musician ML Rex and three of his posse are gunned down in their limo. Suspicion falls on ex-convict and aspiring rapper Alejandro Garcia, ML Rex’s opponent in the nightclub showdown. On deck to prosecute the alleged killer, Karp is chagrined to find that his twin teenaged sons, Zak and Giancarlo, were at the club that night instead of studying for their upcoming bar mitzvahs, as they told their father they would be. Despite being genuinely uncertain about his political run, Karp finds that everyone else, including special assistant Gilbert Murrow, considers his candidacy a fait accompli. Karp gets incensed at a Waldorf Astoria fundraiser when unctuous would-be mayor Andrew Kane presumes to speak to him as a future employee and maneuvers a photo op with him; they have words. We learn that Kane is a villain of Machiavellian proportions, a sociopathic child of incest who (just for starters) blackmails his father into committing suicide. Across the country, meanwhile, Karp’s wife Marlene, having battled terrorists and other criminal scum for years, has finally suffered an emotional toll. She and daughter Lucy are at a spiritual retreat run by crusading ex-cop John Jojola in Taos, where (characteristically) Marlene gets embroiled in the search for a local serial killer preying on children.
In vigorous and full-bodied prose, Tanenbaum gives dimension to a large cast of characters and holds your interest—even when some aspects of his plot veer into implausibility.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-5288-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
You can’t help but chuckle over all the disasters, but in the end the heroine catches her prey.
An Arizona accountant with a penchant for solving murders lands a fishy case.
Sophie "Phee" Kimball might lead a dull life if it weren’t for her mother, Harriet Plunkett, and Harriet’s neurotic Chiweenie, Streetman. As it is, Harriet lives near her daughter in Sun City West and has a wide circle of zany friends who’ve helped Phee solve several mysteries (Molded 4 Murder, 2019, etc.) while she’s been working for Williams Investigations along with her boyfriend, Marshall, a former police officer. While Phee’s visiting Harriet one day, Streetman dashes over to the neighbors’ barbecue grill and unearths a dead body under a tarp. As usual, the overwhelmed local police ask Williams Investigations to help—er, consult. Harriet’s main concern is getting costumes made for the reluctant Streetman, whom she’s entered in a series of contests starting with Halloween and progressing through Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hannukah, and St. Patrick’s Day. One of her friends is an accomplished seamstress who goes all out making gorgeous costumes that will beat an obnoxious lady who looks down on mutts. The dead man is identified as Cameron Tully, a seafood distributor, who was poisoned by the locally ubiquitous sago pine. At the first dog contest, Elaine Meschow has to be rushed to the hospital after she gets a dose of the same thing. The owner of a gourmet dog food company, Elaine is lucky enough to recover. After Streetman takes second place, Harriet’s team redoubles its efforts for the next contest while Phee and Marshall, who are moving into a new place together, continue to hunt for clues. A restaurant holdup and a scheme to use empty houses for hookups for high school kids add to the confusion.
You can’t help but chuckle over all the disasters, but in the end the heroine catches her prey.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2455-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on...
After five adventures for Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and his off-again lover Angela Gennaro (Prayers for Rain, 1999, etc.), Lehane tries his hand at a crossover novel that’s as dark as any of Patrick’s cases.
Even the 1975 prologue is bleak. Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus are playing, or fighting, outside Sean’s parents’ house in the Point neighborhood of East Buckingham when a car pulls up, one of the two men inside flashes a badge, and Sean and Jimmy’s friend Dave Boyle gets bundled inside, allegedly to be driven home to his mother for a scolding but actually to get kidnapped. Though Dave escapes after a few days, he never really outlives his ordeal, and 25 years later it’s Jimmy’s turn to join him in hell when his daughter Katie is shot and beaten to death in the wilds of Pen Park, and State Trooper Sean, just returned from suspension, gets assigned to the case. Sean knows that both Dave and Jimmy have been in more than their share of trouble in the past. And he’s got an especially close eye on Jimmy, whose marriage brought him close to the aptly named Savage family and who’s done hard time for robbery. It would be just like Jimmy, Sean knows, to ignore his friend’s official efforts and go after the killer himself. But Sean would be a lot more worried if he knew what Dave’s wife Celeste knows: that hours after catching sight of Katie in the last bar she visited on the night of her death, Dave staggered home covered with somebody else’s blood. Burrowing deep into his three sorry heroes and the hundred ties that bind them unbearably close, Lehane weaves such a spellbinding tale that it’s easy to overlook the ramshackle mystery behind it all.
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on his characters’ heads.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16316-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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