Those who prefer subtlety should avoid bestseller Tanenbaum’s 24th thriller featuring New York County DA Roger “Butch” Karp (after 2011’s Outrage). When Karp decides to prosecute Nonie and David Ellis for reckless manslaughter because they denied their 10-year-old son appropriate medical care on religious grounds, he incites the wrath of the Rev. C.G. Westlund, “God’s emissary at the End of Days Reformation Church of Jesus Christ.” Meanwhile, evil Nadya Malovo (aka Ajmaani), who’s in custody, is providing federal officials with inside information about a series of planned terror attacks at the same time she’s plotting an attack to seek revenge on Karp and escape her captors. Karp displays his ingenuity in and out of the courtroom, while his attorney wife, Marlene Ciampi, shows her grit digging into Westlund’s sordid background. Daughter Lucy’s linguistic skills and intelligence provide a key break in this relatively lackluster installment. Agent: Mike Hamilburg, Mike Hamilburg Agency. (June)

Butch Karp is the best fictional prosecuting attorney in literature. . . . Tanenbaum is a phenomenal attorney and a remarkable storyteller: It is almost unfair to the rest of us. . . . Outrage grabs you at the outset and astonishes at each page . . . Riveting.

ONE HELL OF A WRITER.” —New York Post

Butch Karp is the best fictional prosecuting attorney in literature. . . . Tanenbaum is a phenomenal attorney and a remarkable storyteller: It is almost unfair to the rest of us. . . . Outrage grabs you at the outset and astonishes at each page . . . Riveting.

The latest installment in Tanenbaum's long-running Karp-Ciampi series (Escape, 2008, etc.). An ailing young boy dies after a con man talks the 10-year-old's parents into turning to faith instead of medicine. A female Russian assassin who infiltrated Islamic terrorist groups for the government has her own deadly agenda. So does Grale, king of the Mole People, an underground army of homeless people. It's all in a day's work for Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi, star husband-wife duo of the New York District Attorney's Office. This installment is centered on Karp's negligence case against David and Nonie Ellis, who put their faith in the slick Rev. C.G. Westlund to save their suffering son Micah from a rare cancer. The preacher, who recently escaped trouble in Memphis, pressured Nonie into putting him and his "church" down as insurance beneficiaries, but if Karp gets the parents convicted, there will be no payoff. Meanwhile, the Russian, Nadya Malovo, who is supposedly working for Karp, is plotting to kill him and his family, holding a grudge from incidents in previous books involving his nemesis, Andrew Kane. Nadya and Grale have a history as well. A book is in trouble from the start when its terrorism plot is second or third in importance. As celebrated as Tanenbaum is as a trial lawyer, he is unable to make the legal case at the heart of this story--or any of the narrative odds and ends surrounding it--fresh or suspenseful. The dialogue is stiff, the dramatic scenes unintentionally cartoonish. The book has its share of entertaining oddities, but they aren't enough to make it more than a run-of-the-mill thriller.