Infamy by Robert K. Tanenbaum (Butch Karp #28)

Infamy is the latest installment in the Butch Karp thriller series by the popular author Robert K. Tanenbaum.

I have to admit that this is the first book I have read in the series, and while I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to follow along, all my worries turned out to be unfounded. Infamy can be easily read as a standalone thriller.

“Butch” Rogert Karp is a prosecutor and chief of the Criminal Courts Bureau, who is working together with his wife, the assistant District Attorney Marlene Ciampi in New York. In Infamy they are given the case of a former army veteran who shot a colonel in cold blood, which makes the case a murder. The only problem with prosecuting the killer?

Well, he claims that he was part of a mind control experiment, that he was effectively set up and that there is a conspiracy at hand, which Karp at some point realizes that it has something to do with the word “MIRAGE”.

As this book is part legal thriller, we know who the killer is right from the start. There is no mystery here involving an attempt to find the perpetrator, as that is all revealed from the first few pages. However what lies beyond the courtroom drama is part of a hidden government program mixed in with terrorism, brainwashing, aka mind control, and corruption, which creates an explosive and action packed political thriller that partly takes place in the courtroom.

When D.A. Butch Karp takes the case to prosecute the ex-army veteran, while working the case, he uncovers the fact that greed, corruption and malice reach as high as the White House. He finds out that a wealthy businessman, Wellington Constantine, is involved in the conspiracy, and he is not only corrupt to the core, but also a wife beater and just an abominable human being all around. Sure enough, Butch is just all too happy to bring him down.

While I haven’t read any previous Butch Karp books, I really enjoyed this character, especially reading him lead a case in the courtroom. But then again, he has a good role model, considering that the author himself is a successful trial lawyer, who apparently has not yet lost a case against a hardened criminal.

The pacing in the book was really good, and at times was even faster than the usual courtroom drama due to the author successfully blending two thriller genres with elegance – legal thriller and political thriller. If you enjoy either of the two genres, you will really like this book. I happen to be an avid reader of both, so this book was right up my alley, a real treat, so much that now I’m looking forward to catching up to older novels in the series.

Overall Infamy was a real treat to read, a book which introduced me to an author whom I should have discovered earlier, but as they say, it’s better late than never.