From Publishers Weekly
At the center of Tanenbaum's scattershot, complicated 17th entry in his Butch Karp/Marlene Ciampi series (
Hoax, etc
.) is a decade-old rape perpetrated by four young men beneath the Coney Island Pier. The so-called Coney Island Four were eventually caught and sent to prison, but an oily, race-baiting lawyer, Hugh Louis, has managed to free them and is now filing a $250 million lawsuit against the city of New York. Karp, Manhattan's district attorney, smells corrupt cooperation between Brooklyn's political establishment and the lawyer, and at the request of the mayor, he steps in to defend the city. Though Tanenbaum effectively brings readers inside the world of crime, politics and the law, he bloats the thriller with distracting subplots. In a boilerplate Tanenbaum twist, a terrorist cell led by a brutal Iraqi takes over an abandoned subway tunnel and takes a member of Karp's family hostage as part of its plan to blow up Times Square on New Year's Eve. Meanwhile, Karp's wife, Ciampi, works to exonerate a college professor accused of rape at the same time she pitches in on the Coney Island Four case. It's too bad Tanenbaum has overstuffed his latest thriller: somewhere beneath the layers of fat there's a svelte, snappy story.
(Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Courtroom maneuvering (as well as the detective work behind it) and family relationships have always been hallmarks of Tanenbaum's Butch Karp-Marlene Ciampi series. Thanks mostly to Marlene, the series has also included its share of heroics, moral pondering, and violence-laced action. This time, however, the brutality seems gratuitous, and the plot turns on coincidence. As usual, several cases are entwined: Karp, now acting district attorney, and his family and friends unmask legal, law-enforcement, and moral corruption as they separately and together face a terrorist threat, marshal a defense against four young black men claiming they were wrongly convicted, and review a rape charge brought by a student against her professor. Unfortunately, the courtroom scenes yield few surprises, and some of the out-of-court action scenes (especially when Marlene, a sharpshooter cowboy, a Native American cop, and a Vietnamese gang boss turn themselves into commandos for a face-off with the terrorists) tip over into the ridiculous. That said, it's tough not to root for characters you've grown to know and like, even if they aren't at their best. Tanenbaum sets up the next installment on the last page of this one; let's hope it's more thoughtfully conceived.
Stephanie ZvirinCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
