Fury

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

• ISBN13: 9780743452908
• ISBN10: 0743452909
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-09-13
• Publisher: Atria

Summary

The seventeenth book in the bestselling Butch Karp/Marlene Ciampi series opens in Brooklyn, with the brutal rape of a female jogger whose assailants are convicted and later exonerated. Now the guilty are filing a multi million-dollar lawsuit against the city of New York, the police, and the two assistant DAs who tried the case. While the police and the criminal justice system are under media assault, Karp has suspicions that there is corruption within his own office. Karp and Marlene are on a mission to restore the system's lost dignity, bring the rapists to justice, and destroy the terrorist cell that threatens the city. All the while terrorists are planning to blow the roof off Times Square on New Year's Eve. As Karp looks more deeply into how the system appears to be undermined, he unearths a tangled web involving corruption, courtroom confrontations and conscience. Fans of Butch Karp, as well as the classic New York crime drama, will find plenty to sink their teeth into with FURY.

Author Biography

Robert K. Tenenbaum has taught Advanced Criminal Procedure at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley.

Excerpts

Chapter 1 Friday, December 10Hugh Louis shifted uncomfortably in the chair next to the desk of the television talk-show host. He'd once played tight end for the semipro New Jersey Packers football team as he worked his way through law school. But those days were more than twenty years under the bridge, and the chair complained like a bitter housewife beneath his bulk.As he waited for the taping to begin, Louis mopped away with a handkerchief at the interlocking streams and tributaries of sweat that coursed over his broad face. The stage crew bustled around, including an intent young woman who dabbed away at his host, Natalie Fitz, with last-minute applications of makeup to disguise encroaching wrinkles and a chronic fatigue that had settled in when she realized some years before that her chances of anchoring network news were slim and none.Unless, she thought with a glance toward Louis, making nice with this fat shyster gets me an Emmy. Then who knows, maybe not the evening spot but one of the news magazines or a morning show. She turned up the wattage on her smile when Louis caught her looking. He returned it with the same show of teeth and lack of sincerity.The other reason for Louis's prodigious amount of sweat was that he always started producing it when he was preparing to lie. It didn't matter that he lied all the time and, in fact, had made it the hallmark of his legal career. But his body never had gotten used to going along with what his mouth was saying. He guessed it had something to do with the strict Baptist upbringing his dear departed mother had beat into him while he was growing up poor and black in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood."Damn, it's hot in here. You folks never hear of air-conditioning?" he said to Fitz, adding a chuckle just to let her know he meant it in a friendly way. Like hell I do, he thought. Bitch probably had them turn up the heat to put me in my place. Well, won't be long, and I won't need the skinny old bag. Then we'll see who turns up the heat.Louis never worried about the ethics of lying. He'd hated his mother and despised her for working at menial jobs -- and for being dark as roasted coffee beans, whereas he'd inherited the milk-chocolate complexion of the father he'd never met.As a kid, he'd dreamed of the day he could leave Bed-Stuy and his mother. Fortunately, his size and an early athleticism had been enough to get him a football scholarship at a small Virginia college. He'd hoped for an NFL career but an affection for fast food had buried whatever slim chance he had beneath rolls of fat. So he'd accepted his "wink and a nod" diploma given to less-than-deserving athletes at the school and moved on to Plan B. His mother had wanted him to join the ministry. "Like hell I will," he told her. "I'm going for where the jack is; I'm going to be a lawyer."Subsequently, he'd been turned down by the finest law schools in the land. But a small, nondescript institution in New Jersey that faced probation with the national law school accreditation board had happily accepted him under its "nontraditional students" program and had even given him a partial scholarship. The Packers (regrettably not the team in Wisconsin) had paid him enough to handle the rest. He'd graduated with a law degree mostly by cheating and plagiarizing. But he'd already developed a reputation for playing the race card when things weren't going his way, so none of his professors were about to challenge him lest they find themselves defending a lawsuit instead of teaching about them.Louis had perfected the art of sliding through holes to advance himself. He took and passed his bar exam in New York under a program that allowed for a certain amount of leniency for minority students, "recognizing that these tests have certain cultural biases that preclude such students from a fair opportunity."His luck continued when he was snapped up by a mid-Manhatta