Outfoxed

May 23, 2016
Edgar-finalist Rosenfelt’s entertaining 14th legal thriller featuring New Jersey attorney and dog lover Andy Carpenter (after 2015’s Who Let the Dog Out?) finds Andy running a program called Prison Pals, which uses inmates to help train and socialize rescued canines. One of them, white-collar criminal Brian Atkins, who’s up for parole in four months from East Jersey State Prison, manages to escape from custody with one of the animals. Soon after, Brian is spotted fleeing from the scene of a bloody double homicide, whose victims are his estranged wife and his former business partner. Naturally, he’s the prime suspect, but Andy, who’s impressed by Brian’s treatment of the dog he was working with, takes on his defense. That task, already daunting given the circumstantial evidence against Andy’s client, becomes even more of an uphill slog when Brian insists on pleading guilty, despite his innocence. The self-deprecating lead, who winds up playing amateur sleuth, is engaging enough, and the plot follows a predictable course to a nevertheless satisfying finish. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House.

June 15, 2016
Dog-loving, work-averse New Jersey attorney Andy Carpenter (Who Let the Dog Out?, 2015, etc.) is dragged back into the courtroom to defend a client who escapes from a minimum security prison hours after hearing that he'll certainly be paroled.The bearer of this good news is Andy himself, who assures Brian Atkins, who's served three years for embezzling from Starlight Systems, the tech company he co-founded, that there's no way the parole board will turn him down four months hence. Evidently that's not quick enough for Brian, who forces Fred Cummings, the trainer of Boomer, the Prison Pal dog Andy's foundation has placed with him, to give him his clothes, then makes his escape and heads for his estranged wife Denise's place, from which a neighbor sees him fleeing shortly after Denise and Gerald Wright, the Starlight partner rumored to be her lover, were stabbed to death there. Reviewing the case against Brian, Andy finds little reason for optimism: "He's an escaped convict with a motive who was found at the murder scene." Andy's only hope to vindicate a client who's perfectly willing to plead guilty is to follow the hints that tangle the murders in the dirty business of fearsome mob boss Dominic Petrone, whom Denise had told Brian she was afraid of (hence his breakout) but didn't tell him why. As Andy makes his amiable rounds asking questions, Petrone gets wind of his inquiries, and in short order the bodies pile up, leaving more than a dozen fatalities, some of them unnamed thugs, before a sudden bright idea allows Andy to ring down the curtain. Perhaps the weakest outing for Rosenfelt, who cuts back and forth between his ebullient hero and the nefarious criminals arrayed against him as if waiting in vain for mystery and suspense to break out. There's not even much about dogs.

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July 1, 2016

Andy Carpenter is a defense attorney, but he prefers to work with his Tara Foundation, supporting rescue dogs. When Buddy, a rescued wire-haired fox terrier, is used in a prison escape by one of his clients, Carpenter is more determined to find the dog than the escapee. When Brian Atkins is accused of murder, Carpenter has to defend Atkins in order to provide Buddy with the home he deserves. No. 14 is another feel-good entry in this ongoing series, after Who Let the Dog Out?

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2016
Andy Carpenter is a lawyer who hates work and loves dogs, and it's his good fortune to have inherited a $35 million nest egg. Such energy as Andy can muster is showered on his dog-rescue operation. As with the earlier Andy novels, a dog provides the plot hook: a prisoner disguises himself as a trainer and walks out with a service animal on a leash. Both are nabbed quickly, but not before the man's wife and business partner are murdered. Of course, the dog nabber didn't do it, and Andy must prove it. The puzzlement is the perfunctory way the investigation and trial are carried out, rather like Andy can't keep his mind on it. Still, it's the fringe stuff that holds the appeal here, recalling Tom Wolfe's observation that a lot of reporting goes into a novellike the revelation that crooks use online auctions to launder money: they put an item up for sale, then bid on it. There's lots of this kind of thing, and it will keep readers going despite a somewhat listless plot. That and the dogs, of course.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)