This Andy Carpenter mystery has him reexamining one of his few losses. Joey Desimone was convicted of murdering his ex-lover and her husband. Andy has always thought he was innocent and convicted because he was the son of a notorious crime boss. When Joey convinces Andy to bring Tara in the guise of a therapy dog to visit his Uncle Nick, Andy hears something from the senile old man than convinces him that everyone overlooked something when the case was first tried.

And when Uncle Nick is killed in a suspicious "accident" just hours after talking to Andy, Andy is more convinced than ever that Joey was wrongly convicted. Andy's investigation takes him into the secrets of some of the old crime families and also shows him how much the old ways have changed.

This new generation of crime bosses are still as adept at evil though as Andy quickly learns.

I enjoyed this tenth book in the Andy Carpenter series. I never get tired of his snark. I also like his determination that justice prevail. ( )

I happened to read a later volume of the Andy Carpenter series long ago and am now, very happily, working my way through the series...in order! Rosenfelt is so good at providing enough background and details that of course you don't need to read them in order, but this...is just plain FUN!! ( )

I like this series a lot. It's my great escape for when I need something humorous, exciting, and fun (assuming you consider killing 28,000 people fun). It's was pretty uplifting in many ways, mostly involving Tara, his dog. In this story, Tara does some time as a comfort dog in a hospital. Evidently, she's pretty good at that, since it mostly just involves letting people pet her, which she likes. Tara always plays a big part in his stories, which usually makes me wish I had a dog.

The stories are not very believable, but the people are fun and it's always entertaining. One of the most fun of the people is Marcus, who acts as a bodyguard when needed, and he always seems to know when he'll be needed. And he always comes through. He could fight a dozen Jack Reachers without even breathing hard. And the dialog - he must utter at least a dozen words per book, although half of them are one-word sentences like "yup". He manages to kill several mafia toughs in this one.

If you expect any realism in your books, you might want to skip these. If you don't like wiseguys, ditto. But he's pretty funny most of the time, I think, and that's something we need more of these days. ( )

organized-crime, international-crime-and-mystery, murder, murder-investigation, law-enforcement, lawyers, family-dynamics, fast-pace, feds, firearms, friendship, situational-humor, snark-fest, verbal-humor, dogs, computer-nerd*****

Another intriguing story with a fairly high body count and some help from the Feds. Andy Carpenter is a wisemouthed lawyer who can afford to take semi retirement by only representing innocent clients while supporting an animal shelter. Add in that his wife is no longer law enforcement but works as his private investigator and more and you have the baseline for these convoluted mysteries. There are many other people who help Andy find out what the truth really is and make it courtroom admissible. This is another one that is kind of scary in the *it is uncomfortably possible* sense. No spoilers, and the snarkfest keeps it from being too realistic. Lots of twists and turns in the plot and the characters certainly are, but there's no need for spoilers or an attempt at a summary. I found it to be a real brain grabber and it is one in a series of interesting and well written mysteries. At no time does the reader feel lost or as if missing background info.
Grover Gardner narrates this complicated snarkfest very well! ( )

No one combines humor with suspense quite like David Rosenfelt. In this installment in the Andy Carpenter series, Andy discovers some new evidence that allows for a retrial of one his clients, now imprisoned for six years. Though his father is in the mob, Joey insists he never entered the family business. Much happens in this mystery: murders, drug running, kidnapping, near murders, rescues, a trial, and therapy dog visits, among other things. But don’t forget the humor that is liberally sprinkled throughout this gripping and suspenseful tale. ( )