Review of "Bark Humbug: An Andy Carpenter Mystery" by David Rosenfelt

  

In this 34th book in the 'Andy Carpenter' series, Andy defends a man accused of murdering a gubernatorial candidate.

*****

Ever since he inherited a large fortune, New Jersey defense lawyer Andy Carpenter takes very few cases.



Instead, Andy spends time with his wife Laurie; plays video games with his 16-year-old son Ricky; visits his dog rescue operation called the Tara Foundation;



and plays with his three pooches - golden retriever Tara; basset hound Sebastian; and pug Hunter. Andy takes Tara and Hunter for long walks every morning and evening, but lazy Sebastian prefers to do his business in the yard, between naps



In his spare time, Andy also likes watching sports on TV and hanging out with his friends, newspaper editor Vince Sanders and Homicide Captain Pete Stanton, at Charlie's Sports Bar. Since Andy is a millionaire, he always pays the bill - and sometimes gets useful information in return.



When Andy agrees to be part of a photospread profiling area celebrities and their dogs, he doesn't realize it's a ploy to get him to represent murder suspect Jon Lowery, who got his dog Luna from the Tara Foundation a couple of years ago.



Andy reluctantly signs on to defend Lowery, and learns Jon is a former Marine Raider and expert sniper. Jon is accused of shooting Paterson mayor - and New Jersey gubernatorial candidate - Craig Henley, and political donor Steven Tiller. Jon got on police radar because he excoriated Henley at a town hall meeting, cursing the candidate for his plans to cut drug addiction programs.



Evidence implicating Jon includes spent rifle shells, X posts threatening the mayor, footprints, hairs from Jon's pooch Luna, and more. With all that 'proof', Andy knows this will be a tough case, and as always, he decides to use the SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) defense. Andy assembles his team, which includes 'The K Team' detective agency, whose investigators are: Andy's wife Laurie Collins - a former police officer;



Corey Douglas - a retired cop; Simon Garfunkel - a K-9 German shepherd who worked with Corey at the Paterson Police Department;



and Marcus Clark - the toughest, scariest guy on the planet.



In addition to The K Team, Andy calls in his accountant Sam Willis - who can hack into any computer anywhere;



his assistant attorney Eddie Dowd - who's especially good with paperwork and motions;



and his secretary Edna - who doesn't like to do any work. This time Edna 'gets the flu', which doesn't prevent her from cashing her weekly paycheck.



Andy's search for alternative suspects turns up mobster Vinnie Esposito - who was accused of crimes when Mayor Henley was a prosecutor; Albanian mobsters running drugs and small arms; contractors who lost business because Henley was on the take; and others.

Author David Rosenfelt follows his usual formula for these mysteries, and Andy is followed and threatened; Marcus Clark beats people up and extracts information from them; Sam hacks into websites and tracks the location of cell phones; Laurie helps with the case and prepares scrumptious pancakes for Sam (who's addicted to them); etc.



As he always does, Andy makes sarcastic remarks and fun quips throughout. This book has some extra laughs when Sam enlists the help of his golden age friends, called the Bubelah Brigade, to help with computer searches. One member of the brigade, Hilda, bakes the best rugelach on the planet. This leads Andy to threaten Sam, "If there are none saved for me...I will put your head in the oven." And Sam replies, "Then you'd better get here soon. Because there are worse ways to go than death by rugelach."



In another amusing passage, Andy talks about Christmas. Laurie plays Christmas music from Halloween on, and Andy remarks, "I am bombarded with the gooey music for months, and I literally spent an hour the other day listening to a Lawrence Welk Christmas album. I would have preferred to be waterboarded." And speaking of gifts, Andy says, "Laurie bought some shirts and a book for me. The book was by her favorite author David Rosenfelt. For some reason, he includes dogs in all his books, so she thinks that will cause me to like his writing. No chance of that. I tried reading his books a couple of times and it put me to sleep. The guy is the Ambien of authors."



As per usual, the trial scenes have Andy poking holes in the testimony of prosecution witnesses, and presenting his 'alternative killer' defense. The novel has some surprises, and - for me - Andy's ethics aren't quite up to par in this book.

This is an enjoyable story, recommended to fans of the series.



I had a copy of the digital book and the audiobook, narrated by Grover Gardner, who always does an excellent job.

Thanks to Netgalley, David Rosenfelt, and Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio for ARCs of the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars