Robert K. Tanenbaum

This is a thriller written by a lawyer. Wait! Come back! It's not boring like most lawyerly fiction is!

Butch and Marlene, Tanenbaum's married sleuths, are back again and they're in fine fettle. I liked them when I first encountered them in No Lesser Plea quite a long time ago. They're a little Nick-and-Nora-y, but they strike out into new territory because she's got one helluva scary job: She's a protection specialist for abused women in jeopardy.

Wait! Come back! It's not like a Lifetime show more movie, I promise!

Butch and Marlene are facing off against the two scariest and cruelest entities on Planet Earth in this book. No, not Simon Cowell and Nina Garcia! The Mafia and the Chinese tongs. They poke their collective nose into what seems like a box-stock hit on a capo after their 12-year-old witnesses part of the war that led to the hit. Now she's a target, and so now it's Close to Home.

It's a taut, well-made thriller, and the stakes could NOT be higher. No, you don't need to read the books in order...this one would make a great place to start, for example. Tanenbaum made the leap from book-at-a-time good to series good a while ago. This 11-year-old outing is no exception. show less

When I first started this, I was completely ready to hate it. First, I'm starting mid-series- which is always a bit dangerous. Second, it's an adult book and I don't go for the adult drama much.

But this one was actually really good. I kept waiting for a crazy plot twist or something really outrageous. And, don't get me wrong, there are a few outrageous things - but in all, I absolutely enjoyed the story. The crime, the people - all the POV's were easy to maneuver and the story clipped along show more quick enough that I couldn't wait to keep turning the pages.

Now I'm curious, does the series continue with this same family?? Hmmm....I think I will continue with this one! show less

Take two parts senseless violence, one part gratuitous sex, two parts conservative propaganda, mix in a smidgen of John Grisham and the Lone Ranger, and serve with a side of Native American spiritualism, and you get this book. Tanenbaum either couldn't decide what he wanted to write about, or couldn't make any of his ideas take up more than fifty pages, because there are no less than four separate plots running through this book, unrelated except for the main characters. Three of the plots show more involve courtroom intrigue, while the fourth is a good old-fashioned find-the-bomb thriller. It's just barely worth wading through to find the good bits. show less

I read this series in all the wrong ways - the first book read was number 12 - I went back to #1 and found that I liked the characters as well as the setting and background so I continued. Then I realized that these books were set in the 70's, I thought, this is going to be so dated and hard to get by without computer and cell phones but I was very much surprised.

The story is so well-written that I never thought about how there were no cellphones and the areas where there were "computer show more printouts" only made me laugh reminding me of the early days of computers. What really startled me was the date and action of the story 9/10/76 about the hijacking of a plane. Was it prophetic, I don't think so, just eerily chilling.

I'm ready for my next trip back to the 70's already. I love a good dose of justice! show less