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

From Publishers Weekly
One sure way to engage reader sympathy in a crime novel is to involve the hero's family; in Roger "Butch" Karp's 15 earlier adventures (Resolved; Absolute Rage; etc.), the DA's family has paid dearly for this inclusion. Wife Marlene is disfigured from a letter bomb, 11-year-old son Giancarlo has been blinded by a would-be assassin, and daughter, Lucy, was abducted twice: "His entire family seemed to attract danger as picnics did ants." Marlene is attending a Taos art therapy school, healing the psychic toll of dispensing vigilante justice and thwarting terrorists. Lucy is there, too, leaving dad behind to battle "evil incarnate" in the form of Andrew Kane, a sociopath running for mayor of New York. Kane's pursuits include insider trading, drugs, prostitution, money laundering, arms sales and extortion. Characters include a killer priest, corrupt policemen, a gallant American-Indian cop and mole people who crawl out of the city's sewers to haunt the night, among others. Tanenbaum keeps all these balls in the air while lecturing on the evils of racism, the plight of the modern Indian, the value of honor, the evils of gangsta rap and much, much more. It is by turns boring, insightful, pedestrian, silly, maudlin, exhausting and exciting. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
New York District Attorney Butch Karp is plagued with murders and other intrigue in this convoluted mystery, especially when Andrew Kane a wealthy, ruthless mayoral wanna-be is implicated. When a rapper is murdered and the dead bodies of preteen boys begin to be found, the plot churns and Lee Sellars has his narration work cut out for him. The importance and individuality of each character are reflected in Sellars's choice of tone and phrasing, making all separate in the ears of the listener. From raspy phone conversations to blustery politicos, Tanenbaum weaves his plot, and Sellars helps the listener keep pace to the conclusion. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
As Tanenbaum's fans know, there's nothing simple about a Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi thriller. The action always unfolds slowly and deliberately, cleverly planned to the last detail, and the richly drawn protagonists constantly struggle with thought-provoking, hugely complicated questions about morality, faith, and family. This sixteenth in the popular series is a bit more philosophical than most, despite drawing its impetus from a scandal picked right from the headlines. The vicious murder of a West Coast rapper sets things in motion, unleashing a white-hot cascade of events that expose violence, greed, and corruption not only at the NYPD and the DA's office but also at the city's Catholic archdiocese. Tanenbaum smoothly reprises events of the previous two books as he relentlessly builds suspense and gets ever closer to the hearts and minds of his singular characters. Will Butch "lose his soul on the altar of politics" by running for district attorney? Will Marlene forgive herself and return to her family? Can Lucy overcome the memory of the man who raped her? Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Linda Fairstein, author of Final Jeopardy, Likely to Die, and The Kills One of the most authentic voices in American crime fiction, Tanenbaum takes us on another turbocharged ride down mean streets, with characters we've come to love. Hoax is a brilliantly plotted thriller with enough twists and turns to live up to its name and enough heart-stopping action to keep you turning pages through the night.

Dr. Michael M. Baden, Forensic Pathologist and former Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York Tanenbaum's best Butch Karp thriller yet -- and that's no "hoax." His knowledge of the criminal justice system and forensic science is unequalled -- brilliantly written.

Booklist ...Relentlessly builds suspense...cleverly planned to the last detail...

Review
Catherine Crier, former judge, Court TV host, and bestselling author of The Case Against Lawyers So intimate a look into the heart of evil, Hoax seems more fact than fiction. Through a series of heinous murders, tawdry relationships, and internal corruptions, Tanenbaum delivers a devastatingly honest portrait of a legal system gone awry and the brave few who fight for justice.

Book Description
New York District Attorney Butch Karp goes head-to-head with a crooked wannabe mayor, the rap underworld, and rogue churchmen in yet another pile-driving thriller in the New York Times bestselling series. When a rap impresario is gunned down in his limo in New York City, it appears that gang-related violence has reared its ugly head once again. But nothing's as it seems in this taut, virtuoso thriller from the pen of Robert K. Tanenbaum. For a start, there's the long tentacles of Andrew Kane, a man who would be mayor, a man who wants to control the power elite like pawns, and a man who has terrible secrets, and knows worse about his friends and foes alike. In addition, the Catholic Church is about to face some secrets of its own, especially when Karp's wife, Marlene, rehabilitating at a Taos, New Mexico art colony, stumbles upon a sex abuse murder scandal brewing in a nearby church retreat. Eventually, the action swings back to a roiled New York, where evidence surfaces connecting rogue priests to murdered kids. Hoax features enough sensational plot twists, heart-racing action, and brilliant crime-solving to fill ten books, as Karp attempts to untangle the web of violence and corruption, both of which threaten his career, and the lives of his family.

Download Description
"New York District Attorney Butch Karp goes head-to-head with a crooked wannabe mayor, the rap underworld, and rogue churchmen in yet another pile-driving thriller in the New York Times bestselling series. When a rap impresario is gunned down in his limo in New York City, it appears that gang-related violence has reared its ugly head once again. But nothing's as it seems in this taut, virtuoso thriller from the pen of Robert K. Tanenbaum. For a start, there's the long tentacles of Andrew Kane, a man who would be mayor, a man who wants to control the power elite like pawns, and a man who has terrible secrets, and knows worse about his friends and foes alike. In addition, the Catholic Church is about to face some secrets of its own, especially when Karp's wife, Marlene, rehabilitating at a Taos, New Mexico art colony, stumbles upon a sex abuse murder scandal brewing in a nearby church retreat. Eventually, the action swings back to a roiled New York, where evidence surfaces connecting rogue priests to murdered kids. Hoax features enough sensational plot twists, heart-racing action, and brilliant crime-solving to fill ten books, as Karp attempts to untangle the web of violence and corruption, both of which threaten his career, and the lives of his family."

From the Inside Flap
Linda Fairstein, author of Final Jeopardy, Likely to Die, and The Kills "One of the most authentic voices in American crime fiction, Tanenbaum takes us on another turbocharged ride down mean streets, with characters we've come to love. Hoax is a brilliantly plotted thriller with enough twists and turns to live up to its name and enough heart-stopping action to keep you turning pages through the night." Dr. Michael M. Baden, Forensic Pathologist and former Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York "Tanenbaum's best Butch Karp thriller yet -- and that's no "hoax." His knowledge of the criminal justice system and forensic science is unequalled -- brilliantly written." Vincent Bugliosi, former Los Angeles District Attorney and author of Helter Skelter and the acclaimed And the Sea Will Tell "Using his previous experience as the top homicide prosecutor in the Manhattan DA's office, Tanenbaum, a master of mystery fiction, brings us Hoax, a suspenseful, action-packed thriller." Catherine Crier, former judge, Court TV host, and bestselling author of The Case Against Lawyers "So intimate a look into the heart of evil, Hoax seems more fact than fiction. Through a series of heinous murders, tawdry relationships, and internal corruptions, Tanenbaum delivers a devastatingly honest portrait of a legal system gone awry and the brave few who fight for justice."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One Eleven days earlier... The air in the nightclub pulsed to the repetitive throbbing of a bass guitar as two spotlights swept above the bobbing heads of the audience. With the recent ban on cigarettes in Manhattan restaurants and bars, the wraiths of smoke that danced to the beat in the glare of the lights emanated from quick secret tokes on marijuana pipes, giving the big room a smokey-sweet smell and a decidedly outlaw ambiance. The beams of light met at center stage and focused on a pair of young men who had stepped from behind a curtain. The men -- one black and one Hispanic -- sauntered to the center of the stage where they were handed microphones by the master of ceremonies like eighteenth-century duelists accepting pistols. But instead of "ten paces turn and fire," they stood two feet apart, glaring at each other and seemingly oblivious to the throbbing music and the pumped-up crowd. Six inches taller than his counterpart, black rap musician ML Rex was thin as a slab of bacon and wore a loose muscle shirt to show off a bevy of thick gold chains and tattoos on his mocha-brown skin meant to impress "the bitches and the busters." His left shoulder bore a tattoo of the ornately drawn numerals 10-78, the police radio ten-code for "officer needs assistance." The inference was that he was a cop killer, though he'd never actually had the balls to shoot at someone who was ready to shoot back. Drive-bys and firing indiscriminately into crowds had been more his style back in his gangbanging days in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. But the 10-78 tat went with the gangsta rap image he cultivated, as did the drawing on his right shoulder of a large-breasted and nude woman posing with a semiautomatic handgun above the inscription Guns & Hos. The son of a hardworking grocer and a domestic servant, ML Rex had been given the name Martin Luther King Johnson. His parents had greatly admired the fallen civil rights leader, but that was all ancient history to "Marty," as only his mother still called him. His heroes were superstar athletes, rappers, and, especially when he was young, the OGs -- old-time gangsters in the 'hood -- because they had the money. He'd insisted in junior high that he be called Mustafa Khalid Mohammed after a sudden growth spurt to six foot two had him fantasizing about a lucrative future career in the NBA, and he decided that an Islamic name sounded more sensational. However, his talent with a basketball did not grow with his body, and he'd had to look elsewhere for the attention he craved. With both parents working long hours and little else to do away from the gym, he'd gravitated to the Bloods street gang that infested his neighborhood like the red-brown cockroaches that took over the house he grew up in every night when the lights went out. The gangs made life difficult, even dangerous, for any young person who might have had a mind of his own and dreams that included college or actually working for a living. But Mustafa was lazy and so he fit right in -- selling crack cocaine and taking the occasional potshot at members of the rival Crips gang. He might have ended up like so many of his friends -- in prison or in a cemetery -- but he'd discovered a talent for the violent, misogynist rhyming to music known as gangsta rap. Combined with a certain knack for getting his foot in the door and ingratiating himself with people who mattered, he'd found his ticket out of the poverty of his youth and away from the 'hood where a boy could get shot for the color of his clothes. He took the stage name ML Rex. Someone had once told him that rex meant king in some fucked-up European language -- so he thought Martin Luther King, ML Rex, was pretty clever. Now, except for the occasional pilgrimage back to Crenshaw Avenue and 103rd Street to show that he was still a Blood at heart, he lived in a nice upscale apartment in Brentwood. Not quite Beverly Hills, he conceded to his envious friends, "but the same 'hood where O.J. kilt that white bitch, homes." Despite the look of impending violence on his face as he stared down at the teenager in front of him at the nightclub, Martin aka Mustafa aka ML Rex was in a great mood. Some of that had to do with the two fat lines of cocaine he'd snorted immediately before leaving the dressing room backstage, the daylong use of which caused him to grind his teeth until his jaw ached. But his ebullience had even more to do with a business meeting he'd demanded that morning with his record label's executives. His first CD, Some Desperate S**t Fer Ya, had been recorded in Los Angeles but produced by Pentagram Records, the main offices of which were in the Penn Plaza building off Thirty-fourth Street and Eighth Avenue. A single from the CD My Baby a Crack Ho' had reached number six on the hip-hop charts for two weeks, and the CD had gone gold, but then it tumbled back off as quickly as it had climbed aboard. He was wealthier than he'd ever imagined growing up on the streets, but he was very disappointed not to have reached the elite status of rappers like Eminem and Snoop Dogg. The way he saw it, Pentagram's failure to pour more money into promotion had cost him a platinum record and his rightful place among the hip-hop hierarchy. So he'd come up with the idea of forming his own record company. He was calling it, logically enough, Rex Rhymes. His business manager, childhood friend and fellow Blood, Kwasama "Zig-Zag" Jones, had protested the move. He was worried that his own ride out of the ghetto was about to hit a brick wall, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. He wasn't much mollified when ML Rex explained that this way they'd cut out the middleman, pocket all the cash, and "we'll control our own des-tin-nees, dog." ML Rex expected that Pentagram executives -- a "bunch of white faggots in suits" -- wouldn't be too happy with his declaration of independence. So he was surprised when he and Jones met with them that morning and the company president listened quietly and then merely asked if he was sure he had "thought this through carefully." "Fuck, yeah," ML Rex said, adjusting his sunglasses with what he hoped looked like nonchalance and slouching even farther in his seat to demonstrate that his position on the matter was firm. "Word," Jones added, adjusting his shades and slouching, too, in a show of solidarity. "Well, all right, then," the executive said with a sigh and a shrug. "I'm sure we'll find some amicable way to resolve the fact that you're still under contract to Pentagram." ML Rex scowled at this and prepared to tell whitey where he could shove the contract. But the man stood, held out his hand, and insisted that ML Rex continue to avail himself of Vincent, the bodyguard/chauffeur the company had sent to meet him at La Guardia. "We want your trip to New York to continue to be a safe one," the man said with a smile. "You never know...we might work together again sometime." The executive's friendly response had at first unsettled the rapper, not to mention hurt his ego -- he'd expected them to make a bigger fuss over losing a rising star of his caliber. "Fuck those muthafuckas," he'd told Jones as they left the building. "Fuckin' wit my head, thas what they tryin' to do." "Word," Jones agreed. Several hours and two grams of cocaine later, ML Rex was feeling better about how he'd "stood up to the man." Still, he was happy to retain the services of Vincent, "jus' call me Vinnie," a huge white man he assumed was some sort of mobbed-up Italian. Vinnie was nearly as wide as he was tall, and with a round, pink face so fat that his beady brown eyes nearly disappeared into the slits above his cheeks. The rapper assumed that the lump beneath the chauffeur's left armpit was a gun, which made him feel better as he'd been forced by airline regulations, and a previous felony conviction for distribution of a controlled substance, to leave his own heat at home. Despite the brave show, ML Rex was a little nervous about being in New York. He'd made his reputation by adding verbal fuel to the fire that perpetuated the West Coast versus East Coast rap wars that the general public had first been made aware of in 1996 with the murder of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas, and then the shooting of Notorious BIG a year later in Los Angeles. Various truces had been arranged, but every so often someone would say something in a rap, someone else would take offense, and the bullets would fly. His own lyrics referred to the East Coast artists and males in general in numerous derogatory ways ranging from faggots to bitches to busters, and boasted about what he'd do to them if their paths ever crossed. Of course, that was safer to say when living large in LA on his own turf. Still, he felt safe enough in the Hip-Hop Nightclub when Vinnie said he needed to stay with the limousine. "Bad neighborhood," he'd grunted. ML Rex figured he had Zig-Zag to watch his back, and it wasn't a bad idea to have his ride ready for a quick getaway should the crowd prove hostile. He looked over at his compatriot, who was standing offstage with his arms around the two hookers they'd procured for the night by calling an "escorts" ad in the back of the Village Voice. The girls were a couple of Puerto Rican sisters who, high on crack and sure of a big payday, gyrated their hips and shook their breasts to the beat as if they'd never been happier in their lives, which might have been true. Yes, he thought as he glared down at his competition, life is good. In the morning he would consummate his business dealings in New York City by working out a deal with a national distributor to get his independent-label CD in stores for a percentage of the sales. Then in the afternoon, he would make the rounds of the big New York radio stations and sweet-talk the DJs (aided by gifts of cash and coke) into giving his forthcoming single plenty of airtime. He'd realized that to really make it big, he was going to have to move away from his West Coast-centric roots and go for a national audience. That was the reason he was going through with the appearance at the nightclub arranged by Pentagram and had agreed to a round of "battle rhyming" against one of the local rappers. Battle rhyming -- essentially two opponents competing with lyrics to win over a live audience -- was the roots of rap. It was part asphalt poetry -- reflective of life in a ghetto -- and part clever, and generally good-natured, put-downs. A way of establishing sidewalk supremacy without anything worse than someone's ego getting hurt. But what had begun as social commentary and competition branched into gangsta rap -- the anthems of the violent, cocaine-financed organized crime cartels that supplanted the old neighborhood gangs -- until much of the music was little more than death threats and boasts of cuckolding each other's bitches. This was the rap that shocked mainstream white America into assuming that all rappers were angry young black men with guns, and attracted white teenagers who, bored with their safe, middle-class suburban lives, wished they were black gangsters, too. As a whole, the rap genre had lost much of its street sensibilities when record companies finally recognized that poor urban teen-agers who couldn't afford to buy new laces for their Lugz would spend every last penny on the latest Wu Tang Clan CD. Slickly produced, with lots of bells and whistles, the commercialized rap had drummed the on-the-fly improvisation right out of the genre. Despite the success of Eminem's film 8 Mile, the story of a battle-rhyming, odds-beating white rapper, it was hard to even find the art form away from the amateurs on the sidewalks where it all began. The Hip-Hop Nightclub, a formerly abandoned warehouse on West Thirty-eighth Street near the Hudson River, was one of the few venues left in the city. It had been open for two years, mostly struggling by in a neighborhood of boarded-up, graffiti-marred buildings. But slowly the club developed a loyal following of rap purists, and a reputation as the place for local would-be rap stars to catch the ears of record label scouts searching for new talent. Over the course of its existence, several rappers who'd appeared in the Friday night battles had been signed to recording contracts. ML Rex couldn't have cared less about the history of his art. He was in it for the money and the prestige. Like most rappers, he got his start on the sidewalks and in gang hangouts, rhyming with his fellow Bloods while guzzling "40's" of Schlitz Malt Liquor. But for a star such as himself, battle rhyming was generally seen as beneath his status, and he considered his appearance at the Hip-Hop Nightclub to be slumming. In fact, he'd regretted it as soon as he'd heard himself agree to "give the folks a thrill by participating in our little show," as the owner/MC had put it. He'd have much rather just to have been introduced, perhaps hyped the audience with a little taste of something off the new CD, then waved good-bye and gone on a little booty call with the hookers back at his expensive suite in the Waldorf-Astoria. But there was that ego thing, emboldened by the cocaine, and he couldn't back down once he'd accepted the challenge. Backstage in the waiting room he'd insisted on for privacy, he considered a variety of options that would allow him to leave before the show without losing face. It had been a long time since he'd participated in a battle, and he wasn't thinking as clearly as he'd have liked. He was therefore relieved when he was introduced to his opponent, a short, stocky Puerto Rican teen who looked like he'd wandered in off the street. If this little spic's what passes for a gangsta in New York City, he thought, I got shit to worry 'bout. Li'l muthafucka can't even dress hisself. The self-assurance, however, evaporated as he stared in his opponent's eyes while the MC worked the crowd into a frenzy. He didn't know what it was, but there was something about the other young man's gaze that rattled him. The teen seemed so...calm, or maybe it was confidence, or both...like he didn't need the bluster and bluff that defined ML Rex's personality. Thrown off his game, he broke off from the staring contest and smiled at the crowd. "Sheee-it, this li'l bitch the bes' ya'll got?" he shouted into his microphone. Copyright © 2004 by Robert K. Tanenbaum

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When a rap impresario is gunned down in his limo in New York City, it appears that gang-related violence has reared its ugly head once again. But nothing's as it seems in this thriller from the pen of Robert K. Tannebaum. For a start, there's the long tentacles of Andrew Kane, a man who would be mayor, a man who wants to control the power elite like pawns, and a man who has terrible secrets, and knows worse about his friends and foes alike. In addition, the Catholic Church is about to face some secrets of its own, especially when Karp's wife, Marlene, rehabilitating at a Taos, New Mexico art colony, stumbles upon a sex abuse murder scandal brewing in a nearby church retreat. Eventually, the action swings back to a roiled New York, where evidence surfaces connecting rogue priests to murdered kids. Hoax features enough crime-solving to fill ten books, as Karp attempts to untangle the web of violence and corruption, both of which threaten his career, and the lives of his family.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

One sure way to engage reader sympathy in a crime novel is to involve the hero's family; in Roger "Butch" Karp's 15 earlier adventures (Resolved; Absolute Rage; etc.), the DA's family has paid dearly for this inclusion. Wife Marlene is disfigured from a letter bomb, 11-year-old son Giancarlo has been blinded by a would-be assassin, and daughter, Lucy, was abducted twice: "His entire family seemed to attract danger as picnics did ants." Marlene is attending a Taos art therapy school, healing the psychic toll of dispensing vigilante justice and thwarting terrorists. Lucy is there, too, leaving dad behind to battle "evil incarnate" in the form of Andrew Kane, a sociopath running for mayor of New York. Kane's pursuits include insider trading, drugs, prostitution, money laundering, arms sales and extortion. Characters include a killer priest, corrupt policemen, a gallant American-Indian cop and mole people who crawl out of the city's sewers to haunt the night, among others. Tanenbaum keeps all these balls in the air while lecturing on the evils of racism, the plight of the modern Indian, the value of honor, the evils of gangsta rap and much, much more. It is by turns boring, insightful, pedestrian, silly, maudlin, exhausting and exciting. Agent, Robert G. Diforio. (Aug.) Forecast: This will do well with Tanenbaum's numerous fans, but it's too preachy to bring many new readers to the series. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Long-running series hero Butch Karp prosecutes a young rapper for murder while wife Marlene seeks spiritual peace in New Mexico. Both get more than they bargained for. As righteous Karp (Resolved, 2003, etc.) contemplates a dive into the dirty world of politics with a run for New York District Attorney, challenges both professional and personal confront him. After an altercation stemming from a rap duel at the midtown Hip-Hop Nightclub, black rap musician ML Rex and three of his posse are gunned down in their limo. Suspicion falls on ex-convict and aspiring rapper Alejandro Garcia, ML Rex's opponent in the nightclub showdown. On deck to prosecute the alleged killer, Karp is chagrined to find that his twin teenaged sons, Zak and Giancarlo, were at the club that night instead of studying for their upcoming bar mitzvahs, as they told their father they would be. Despite being genuinely uncertain about his political run, Karp finds that everyone else, including special assistant Gilbert Murrow, considers his candidacy a fait accompli. Karp gets incensed at a Waldorf Astoria fundraiser when unctuous would-be mayor Andrew Kane presumes to speak to him as a future employee and maneuvers a photo op with him; they have words. We learn that Kane is a villain of Machiavellian proportions, a sociopathic child of incest who (just for starters) blackmails his father into committing suicide. Across the country, meanwhile, Karp's wife Marlene, having battled terrorists and other criminal scum for years, has finally suffered an emotional toll. She and daughter Lucy are at a spiritual retreat run by crusading ex-cop John Jojola in Taos, where (characteristically) Marlene gets embroiled in the search for alocal serial killer preying on children. In vigorous and full-bodied prose, Tanenbaum gives dimension to a large cast of characters and holds your interest-even when some aspects of his plot veer into implausibility.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Using his previous experience as the top homicide prosecutor in the Manhattan DA's office, Tanenbaum, a master of mystery fiction, brings us Hoax, a suspenseful, action-packed thriller.  — Vincent Bugliosi

One of the most authentic voices in American crime fiction, Tanenbaum takes us on another turbocharged ride down mean streets, with characters we've come to love. Hoax is a brilliantly plotted thriller with enough twists and turns to live up to its name and enough heart-stopping action to keep you turning pages through the night.  — Linda Fairstein

So intimate a look into the heart of evil, Hoax seems more fact than fiction. Through a series of heinous murders, tawdry relationships, and internal corruptions, Tanenbaum delivers a devastatingly honest portrait of a legal system gone awry and the brave few who fight for justice.  — Catherine Crier