Depraved Indifference

Depraved Indifference is the second of 29 books in the Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi series, written by Robert K. Tanenbaum. I’ve very favorably reviewed both the first and last novels of this series. These are legal dramas which are played out in the office of the New York City District Attorney. Karp and Ciampi are the protagonists – compelling figures. I jumped into this book eagerly, and the set up was excellent. The story takes place in the mid 1970s. Under the threat of setting off a bomb, a group of Croatian terrorists highjack a plane to bring attention to their cause which is freedom from Croatia from Yugoslavia. In the process, Terrence James Doyle, a cop on the NYPD bomb squad is killed. Usually, bringing a cop killer to justice would be a priority for all law enforcement people, but suddenly there were political roadblocks being thrown in the way of pursuing Doyle’s murderer. That’s where the story lost me. One the one hand, Tanenbaum included his very rich cast of characters in the DA’s office, and he wrote of the ongoing power struggle in the office. But Tanenbaum took the story back to Yugoslavia and the struggles between various ethnic groups during WWII, and since that time. Characters who were alive and involved in horrific atrocities among these ethnic wars were tied to the current murder. So, the case went far afield before Tanenbaum circled the barn a few times and finally brought the story to a satisfactory conclusion. I was not as hot for this story as the other two, but I plan an eventual return visit to Karp and Ciampi once I get caught up on my reading queue.