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Book Reviewed by:Attorney Andy Carpenter loves dogs, especially his own beloved Tara. When Andy discovers that this gentle dog is a key witness to a murder, it will take all the tricks he knows to convince a jury to take canine testimony seriously.
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 life—and his own—in the process.
Rosenfelt's style is light and witty, putting the reader at ease with a promise of an entertaining plot with minimal bloodshed. It's shoo-in for animal lovers and those who like their legal thrillers on the cozy side...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
The idea of canine testimony being accepted in court is not without precedent
(e.g. drug smugglers who are convicted on the evidence of sniffer dogs), but
what about the idea of putting an animal itself on trial?
These days, animals are not tried on the basis that they lack the ability to make moral judgments and therefore cannot be held culpable for an act. However, this was not always so. Numerous cases exist in history, many of them collected in The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals written by
Edward Payson Evans in 1906 and reprinted in the 1980s. For example:
"In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having torn the ...
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