Good Dog, Bad Cop
K-Team Book 4
David Rosenfelt
Minotaur Books
March 14th, 2023
Good Dog, Bad Cop by David Rosenfelt has plenty of action and humor. There is always a dog on the cover, which should draw readers in. This series, involving the K-Team, is a spin-off of the Andy Carpenter series. It features many of the same exciting characters.
The team consists of Corey Douglas, a retired police detective, his retired German Shepherd police dog Simon Garfunkel, named after the rock group, and PIs Laurie Collins and Marcus Clark.
While Corey doesn’t have the same rapid fire, often in your face humor as Andy, he can be very sarcastic at times. Rosenfelt noted, “Corey is more like Andy than he should be. Both have my personality. Corey is different from Andy in that he is not a physical coward, but a risk taker. Corey can be devious, sarcastic, analytical, and humorous.”
As with all these books Corey is a first-person narrator. With this story there are suspects and bodies galore. The K-Team is hired by the Paterson New Jersey police to consult on Cold Cases. They get to choose their cases and this time decide on a case personal to Corey since the killings involved police he knew. Police Detective Danny Avery is murdered execution-style. The killing was being investigated by Danny’s mentor, former detective Jimmy Dietrich. Unfortunately, he and Danny’s wife, Susan were also killed on Jimmy’s boat. It was considered a murder suicide with Jimmy pulling the trigger. What upsets Corey is that Danny and Jimmy are considered corrupt. With no true evidence available, the deaths went unsolved, and the case declared cold. Now Corey and the team want to find the real murderers and clear the dead polices’ names.
Besides wanting to clear the names of those he knew, Corey is also having problems with his girlfriend, Dani. “I wrote her as witty, compulsive, direct, confidant, determined, and very independent. She never hints at the possibility of marriage, which bugs Corey. She does not want a commitment. The two things that bother him is that he has completely turned around from how he used to be. He is very interested in having a relationship and is insecure that she does not want it.”
Readers will travel with the characters to Philadelphia, New Jersey, Chicago, Queens, Upstate New York, and California. “I want to get the characters out occasionally. The problem is if one character is moved around the whole crew needs to move around because it is an ensemble. This is tough to do. In the next book, Andy spends a lot of time in California because a murder happens within the movie business. The title is Flop, Dead, Gorgeous. In high school Andy dated someone who became a big Hollywood star. She is accused of murder and Andy takes her on as a client.”
The plot is filled with action, intrigue, and great banter. The suspects are not literally and figuratively what they appear to be, which enhances the mystery. The characters will draw the readers into the story including the canine one.
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