One Dog Night

May 9, 2011
In Rosenfelt's winning ninth Andy Carpenter legal thriller (after Dog Tags), Paterson, N.J.'s most reluctant defense attorney agrees to defend recovering drug addict Noah Galloway, who's been arrested for setting a fire six years earlier that killed 26 people. Andy and Noah have two important connections: Noah tried to break into Andy's house about a year before the arson incident, and Noah was the original owner of Tara, Andy's beloved golden retriever. Though Noah remembers nothing about the fire, he tells Andy he's guilty. With Noah resigned to a life behind bars without parole, Andy does his usual sterlingâand amusingâperformance in the courtroom to stall for time. The colorful supporting cast provides some unusual assists: incurable pessimist Hike Lynch starts to look on the bright side; semiliterate Willie Miller decides to write a book; accountant and computer expert Sam Willis becomes a gun-packing field agent for Andy. The zany plot, despite its improbabilities, will keep readers turning the pages.

June 15, 2011

Andy Carpenter, the laziest member of the New Jersey bar, is backed into trying a six-year-old case of arson and murder on behalf of a client who admits that he's guilty.

Whoever doused the building in Paterson's Hamilton Village with napalm and set it aflame killed 26 people, most of them burned beyond recognition, in the process. The case has stuck in Lt. Pete Stanton's craw, and he's delighted to see fresh evidence that Noah Galloway, a prescription-drug abuser turned anti-drug counselor, lit the match. Nor does Galloway contest the charges; he merely insists that he never talked to Danny Butler, the state's key witness. Faced with a client who says he's probably guilty but disputes the evidence, Andy vows to repay Noah for rescuing Hannah, the golden retriever Andy later adopted as Tara, by fighting to exonerate him. The odds are long because Andy can't cross-examine Butler, who's been conveniently executed after his deposition; because Andy has no clear evidence against Noah's guilt and no plausible alternative theory of the crime to offer; but mainly because Rosenfelt has elected to enlist against Andy's team all the mighty powers of another nationwide conspiracy that could mean the end of the world as we know it (Dog Tags, 2010, etc.). The results will be heartwarming to dog lovers, absorbing to fans of courtroom byplay, and bemusing to readers who expect their international intrigue served up with more authority.

The verdict: canny legal maneuvering in the courtroom and out; tiresomely repetitive foreshadowing of dire events to come; and unconvincingly inflated threats against the nation, as if the characters' welfare didn't supply enough rooting interest.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from July 1, 2011
Andy Carpenter, laziest of lawyers, is back. He's always been a blessed anomaly in crime fiction. Given the herd of Byronic mopes who populate the genre, cheerful Andy is like a gulp of cold water on a steamy day. The same goes for his girlfriend, ex-cop Laurie. She's not one more bitter victim of the system. She enjoys digging into mysteries as much as she enjoys irritating Andy. As in all the Carpenter novels, in this one our breezy protagonists get into a situation that isn't funny. An ex-druggie is accused of starting a fire that killed a houseful of innocent people. The guilt-wracked suspect is sure he's the killer, though he really doesn't remember the five-years-cold incident. Why has it flared up again now? Why are we suddenly watching a U.S. senator lured into a honey trap? What's going on in that underground mine? Rosenfelt peels back the layers of puzzlement ever so skillfully, tantilizing us throughout until, finally, both Andy and the reader are enlightened, simultaneously. A gem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)