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Leader Of The Pack (2012)

by David Rosenfelt(Favorite Author)

4.01 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0312648049 (ISBN13: 9780312648046)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Minotaur Books

series

Andy Carpenter

review 1: I enjoy the Andy Carpenter series of books although lawyer books aren't always my thing. Perhaps it's because Carpenter is an unconventional lawyer, wealthy enough to pick and choose his cases, but not snobby and elitist. This case wasn't necessarily my favorite, as Carpenter gets the chance to re-defend a client who has spent the past 6 years in jail for killing his ex-lover and her husband after it is discovered that the prosecution withheld evidence the first time around that suggests that the husband was the one targeted and his wife was simply killed because she was there. Carpenter's client, Joey, is the son of a big mob boss but was not into the family 'business', and Carpenter feels he was wrongly convicted because the jury was swayed by his last name. Mob-related ... morestorylines seem to be common in the books I read, perhaps also used by Rosenfelt in other books I've read.My favorites of Rosenfelt's books are the ones that focus more on Carpenter's dog Tara and the animal rescue he started with his newfound wealth. While Tara was a focus of early chapters where Carpenter is goaded by his girlfriend Laurie into taking Tara to a hospital to cheer up some of the patients there, her role in the book becomes solely that of Andy's silent sounding board while he discusses his case during their walks. Overall, this wasn't a bad book, I'm just getting tired of reading about Mafia hits (or at least supposed ones) in books by a variety of authors, not just Rosenfelt, and am hoping the next one I read of his is more dog-focused.
review 2: I’m sure these are laborious at times, and it takes a lot of effort to make a novel read as smoothly as these do, but it really seems like David Rosenfelt is on automatic pilot these days with these Andy Carpenter books, they’re consistently entertaining, clever, and filled with the requisite twists for a good mystery -- he almost has to be working off an assembly line.The investigator/bodyguard Marcus in the Hawk/Joe Pike/Bubba Rugowski role here is ever closer to the super hero that Rosenfelt has had in mind since his introduction -- he eats more Michael Phelps, fights better than Batman and talks only a little more than Marcel Marceau. But it’s fun, and there’s no pretension to anything approaching realism, so it works.The same is true for Sam, Andy’s accountant/hacker. He’s faster with a computer than is possible, and somehow gets into places he shouldn’t be able to very easily. Again -- it’s fun enough that it’s excusable, and he’s not nearly as nigh-omnipotent as Marcus is, he messes up, is far too focused on being in the field, in the midst of action. I worry this’ll either spell doom for him soon, or he’ll become as incredible as Marcus. I do miss the song-talking Sam days, though -- but I can’t imagine Rosenfelt going back to that now.I realize that with the bench of recurring characters he’s established, not everyone gets the kind of “screen time” they once did, but there was so little of Laurie in this book I was pretty disappointed -- part of the charm of the books is the two of them working together. Hopefully that’s rectified in the next book. These were all thoughts that came to me after I read and stopped to think about it -- by page 2 or 3, most of my critical functions turned off and I just had fun with the book. But one thing did stick out to me, the big crime that’s being carried out during the trial (and has a direct bearing on the outcome of Andy’s case -- not that anyone could tell him about it, until it’s too late) has been so big, so epic in scale that it’s mind-boggling. They almost feel like they don’t fit both in tone or scope with the rest of the book/series. When the bad guys did _____ this time, it really took me out of the moment. It didn’t ultimately detract from the book (I don’t think), but it was incongruous enough, that I had to work at it for a chapter or two.Still, one of the most enjoyable mystery series around -- I laughed, I got tense, I didn’t see much of the ending coming at all. less

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