Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
Since Brennan capitulated, Mayor-elect Denton demands New York's Acting District Attorney Butch Karp to defend the city. Meanwhile, Butch’s wife Marlene Ciampi, defends visiting Russian Professor Alexis Michalik from the rape charge of NYU graduate student Sarah Ryder. While the married couple struggles with highly visible cases, they hear rumors that murderer David Grale, thought dead, is alive, and that terrorists plan to blow up Times Square at midnight on New Year's Eve.
The seventeenth Karp-Ciampi legal thriller is terrific when the story line focuses on the two rape cases; on the other hand the terrorists and Grale subplots seem cartoonish and unnecessary in comparison. The lead duet remains as fresh and solid as ever as they work difficult cases under the media spotlight and the heated political reactions to the negative publicity of being on the accused side of both fights. Though the ending is obvious, fans of the series will cherish this installment and look forward to the next one, already set up.