Malice (Butch Karp Series #19) » (~)

Robert K. Tanenbaum is one of the country’s most successful trial lawyers - he has never lost a felony case. At the New York District Attorney’s office he served as bureau chief of the Criminal Courts, ran the Homicide bureau, and was in charge of training the legal staff. Thereafter, he was deputy chief counsel to the Congressional committee investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For four years, he taught Advanced Criminal Procedure at his alma mater, the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley. He has conducted continuing legal education (CLE) seminars for practicing lawyers in California, New York, and Pennsylvania and is the USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of eighteen novels, including Counterplay, Fury, Hoax, Resolved, Absolute Rage, Enemy Within, True Justice, Act of Revenge, and Reckless Endangerment. He is also the author of the true-crime books Badge of the Assassin and The Piano Teacher: The True Story of a Psychotic Killer.

New York District Attorney Butch Karp, recovering from an assassination attempt that came within a few millimeters of killing him, takes on a shadowy cartel that uses terrorists to further its criminal empire while sliding the United States toward a fascist state that the cartel controls. As Karp struggles to uncover those responsible for planning the terrorist murders of six schoolchildren, he goes to the aid of the younger brother of his college roommate, who has been unfairly suspended from his position as baseball coach at a university in Idaho.

Meanwhile, Marlene Ciampi is in Idaho to help her husband with the investigation, and she befriends a Basque sheepherder who is demanding answers to the disappearance of his daughter - a pretty college coed he suspects is having an affair with the school’s president - which may be related to Karp’s case. And if that wasn’t enough, the couple’s daughter, Lucy, and her eclectic group of accomplices must uncover a traitor’s plot and stop an assassination attempt surreptitiously planned to occur in the heart of Manhattan.

Publishers Weekly

Tanenbaum's run-of-the-mill 19th thriller to feature Manhattan district attorney Butch Karp and his wife, Marlene Ciampi, picks up where 2006's Counterplayleft off. Karp is recovering at Beth Israel Hospital, after being shot by his rival and fellow prosecutor, Rachel Rachman, who was in turn gunned down by Ciampi. Various members of the Karp family have helped thwart terrorist outrages aimed at the pope. The mastermind behind the plot against the pope, mayoral candidate and murderer Andrew Kane, is believed dead, but Karp suspects that someone at a high level in U.S. security circles fed Kane key information and remains poised to do the country further harm. Once again, Karp's plucky daughter, Lucy, becomes involved in a plot so improbable that the author has Ciampi comparing it with the far-fetched conspiracies of The Da Vinci Code. Series fans will be pleased, but those seeking sophisticated political suspense set in a post-9/11 New York City should look elsewhere. (Aug.)