Dogged pursuit

After 30 novels of trial lawyer Andy Carpenter outfoxing villains who have underrated him, author Rosenfelt (The More the Terrier, 2024) gives his hero an origin story. We read that defense attorney Carpenter began as, of all things, a prosecutor. But something that drives so many storybook PIs was missing: justice. He comes to believe it's beside the point in a system best at smashing the poor; he'd at least feel better on the other side. Then he meets the dog, golden retriever Tara, and adopts her immediately. He'll tell you she's smarter than he is--and things go best when he does what she wants. A new case emerges when he tries to also adopt Tara's friend Sunny, and Carpenter's crime-solving begins. Girlfriend Nicole backs away when she sees how dangerous his new life is; but Carpenter is warming to someone new, a protective female PI. It's all there: his love of sports, dodgy relations with the cops, lowbrow defensiveness--and how he got that way. Fans old and new will enjoy the story.

Andy Carpenter's first case. Actually, it's his second case; he's already gotten the charges against a sex worker tossed by threatening to subpoena a list of her well-connected clients. Andy, who's not yet the millionaire he'll be in the future, has just left the Passaic County district attorney's office and set up shop as a criminal defense attorney when he gets sucked into not one but three murders. Someone's blown up Stephen Pearson's car with Pearson, the owner of Pearson Trucking, and two employees widely assumed to be collateral damage, inside. Suspicion's naturally fallen on Ryan Tierney, the longtime friend Pearson had just fired, since he's publicly vowed revenge and happens to know a good deal about explosives. When Andy visits Tierney in prison and offers to temporarily take in his dog, Sonny, who's been placed in a shelter, along with Tara, a golden retriever who's bonded with Sonny, Tierney asks him to snatch the case from the overworked public defender, and Andy can't say no. Despite his struggles to adjust to his new job, Andy acquits himself well in and outside of the courtroom as he tries to answer the riddle of why loan shark Jason Shore would have pumped $2 million into Pearson Trucking, none of which had been repaid, and the identification of the killer will surprise most readers. But they'll cheer even more when Andy, who's still more or less married to heiress Nicole Gant, meets investigator Laurie Collins, his future wife, and Tara, his forever dog, for the first time. Still in the future: his initial encounters with strong-arm Marcus Clark and his imperishably opaque secretary, Edna. A prequel fans will cherish as the origin story of Paterson, New Jersey's snarkiest lawyer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.