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From the book jacket: Few can rival attorney Andy Carpenter's
affection for golden retrievers, especially his own beloved Tara. After he
astonishes a New Jersey courtroom by successfully appealing another golden's
death sentence, Andy discovers that this gentle dog is a key witness to a murder
that took place five years before.
Andy pushes the boundaries of the law even further as he struggles to free an
innocent man by convincing an incredulous jury to take canine testimony
seriously. It will take all the tricks Andy's fertile mind can conceive to get
to the bottom of a remarkable chain of impersonations and murder, and save a
dog's lifeand his ownin the process.
Comment: David Rosenfelt's sixth legal thriller to feature lawyer Andy
Carpenter opens with Andy rescuing a 7-year-old golden retriever from the "death
chamber" because its owner reported he had been bitten by the dog. In such
cases, a dog cannot be put up for adoption, so unless it is reclaimed by its
owner it is put down. Andy goes to court and, in a short-lived media-spectacle
of a trial, wins the right to keep the dog, and looks forward to taking "Yogi"
home to keep his other dog company.
This could be the end of an enjoyable
short story but it's just the start of the entertaining mystery that follows,
which begins when a woman contacts Andy claiming that the dog belongs to her
brother and that "Reggie" is integral to overturning the verdict against her
brother who is in jail having been found guilty of killing his fiancée five
years before while onboard a boat four miles out at sea on a stormy night.
To account for the fact that Reggie was not on the boat when Richard was taken
into custody, the prosecution claimed he must have thrown the dog overboard.
That Richard's dog is alive and well (and therefore could not have been thrown
overboard 4 miles out to sea) throws a spanner in the prosecution's case and
calls into question other "facts" of the case, which Andy gets reopened. From here things hot up
with unknown gunmen taking aim at Andy, dissembling FBI agents, dodgy New Jersey
customs inspectors and a hint of international intrigue.
Rosenfelt's style is light and witty, putting the reader at ease with a promise
of an entertaining plot with minimal bloodshed. It's a shoo-in for animal
lovers and those who like their legal thrillers on the cozy side.
David Rosefelt was the former marketing president for Tri-Star Pictures before
becoming a writer of novels and screenplays. He describes himself as "a
novelist with 32 dogs". In 1995 he and his wife started the Tara Foundation.
They have rescued more than 4,000 dogs, many of them Goldens, and found them
loving homes. Their own home has become a sanctuary for those dogs that are too
old or sick to be wanted by others.
Series Order:
Open and Shut (2002)
First Degree (2003)
Bury the Lead (2004)
Sudden Death (2005)
Dead Center (2006)
Play Dead (2007).
This review
first ran in the June 25, 2007
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
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