Heart of a Killer: A Thriller

While I love the Andy Carpenter novels, as fun as they are they have also gotten predictable. Everything is the greatest, dogs are front and center, and Andy acts like Kevin O'Brian's sidekick.

The lawyer in this novel, Jamie Wagner, conveys all the witty writing of Rosenfelt without being so predictable. All in all, I think Mr. Rosenfelt just stepped up onto the main stage of mystery writers.

I do love this author, and the andy Carpenter series is a lot of fun. Also, as a dog lover, I agree with the previous review that lamented the lack of dogs in this one.

BUT - overall, this book was disappointing. Of some concern was poor editing - I think I found three grammar mistakes in the first 20 pages, and I just expect better from this author. The story was pretty convoluted. Also, I didn't really LOVE the characters so that left me a little flat. There was some suspense as I figured that the heroine was probably going to live and be the girlfriend of our hero, and wondering how he would pull this off to make this a happily ever after. I know this author loves a sort of laid-back, sarcastic hero, and I get what he was trying to do, but all in all, I think, the book was just so-so. I did enjoy the depiction of his parents. Maybe go back to Andy Carpenter? And get a new editor?

I love Rosenfelt's Andy Carpenter series, but I just finished Heart of a Killer and I think it's his best book ever. What a fertile imagination Rosenfelt has! A great read (even if it doesn't have a single dog in it). He made me truly care about the characters.

That sentence, quoted by Writer's Digest, was included in a book manuscript by a wannabe writer, who was told not to write about flying a plane if she did not know a damn thing about it.

I was enjoying "Heart of a Killer" until David Rosenfelt decided to create a minor character who was an FAA Air Traffic Controller. My work in this activity occurred at Chicago Center. The author made no effort to obtain help with this part of his book by consulting an expert. It was an error of story creation unworthy of an author as senior as David Rosenfelt. Air Traffic Controllers engaged at their vital work stations are not available to children by telephone. I have no intention of suspending that much disbelief. The book is going back to the library.

Although Rosenfelt's plot feels a bit schizophrenic, his protagonist is endowed with a penchant for self-deprecating humor that makes the novel more palatable. Beneath the sturm und drang of a case that draws a mediocre young attorney to the defense of a convicted killer and a political firestorm is an attack on national security that is the linchpin of the plot. Incarcerated Sheryl Harrison has petitioned the court to fro the right to die without the state's interference on her behalf. Her teen daughter urgently needs a transplant and it is Harrison's intention to provide that heart. With the state responds predictably, Sheryl's pro bono attorney, Jamie Wagner, has no choice but to prove his client innocent of the crime to which she has confessed. Plucked from obscurity in a prestigious law firm for Harrison's case, the Harvard graduate weighs an elusive dream of partnership with the dictates of his conscience. Thanks to the support of a brilliant legal mind and a detective unsatisfied with the resolution of the Harrison case, Jamie's decision isn't as preposterous as it might seem.

The real meat of the story surrounds an incipient terrorist plot, Harrison's dead husband but a small cog in a very sophisticated operation- one that must stay under the radar and out of the news. Rosenfelt delivers the action on two fronts, the time-sensitive dilemma of the incarcerated Sheryl and the increasingly deadly machinations of a technical mastermind adept at computer espionage. Without the unraveling begun by Sheryl Harrison's petition to the court, there would be no edge-of-the seat encounters between government agencies and the gleeful mastermind who threatens the security of the country. While not terribly solid, the story is entertaining thanks to Rosenfelt's quirky sense of humor and his broad caricature of an evil genius. Luan Gaines/2012.