Hoax: A Novel

The shooting death of a rap mogul is the first link in a sinister chain ensnaring New York District Attorney Butch Karp. With his wife and daughter on a New Mexico retreat, Karp is left to fend for his teenaged sons and himself. Descending into the hip-hop underworld to prosecute a killer, Karp comes head-to-head wih Andrew Kane, a powerful would-be mayor whose corrupt web of influence leads Karp to unveil a shocking church sex-abuse scandal. In a world where secrets can be buried for an often-deadly price, Karp discovers there is no safe haven.

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Readers of this long-running series starring New York Assistant D.A. Butch Karp and his lethal but lovable wife Marlene Ciampi will wonder why three-quarters of their 16th adventure is devoted to a rehash of their personal history, a dissection of their tangled psyches, and a tedious retelling of events that have little bearing on what passes for the plot of this one. Once again, it's a story of higher-up cover-ups of both political and priestly evil--in this case, a candidate for mayor who's as murderous and venal as ever was, and a serial pedophile killer who happens to be a Catholic cleric. Unlike the previous books in Tanenbaum's oeuvre, this one lacks the skill and verve of Michael Gruber (Tropic of Night), the uncredited writer largely responsible for making the series come alive on the page. Whoever took over needs to learn the difference between telling and showing before he or she tackles the next in Tanenbaum's series. --Jane Adams