Why I highly recommend the Andy Carpenter series! ⚖️

I came across the Andy Carpenter series by David Rosenfelt a couple of years ago through the London library and found the author's style of writing highly enjoyable. Presenting grisly murder 
mysteries and court room drama with a sense of humour is surely worth applauding!

Andy Carpenter is a criminal defence attorney based in New Jersey and the books revolve around cases that he accepts grudgingly, investigates thoroughly and defends in court entertainingly.



The investigation takes time and the mystery is resolved right at the end sometimes after the case's closing arguments are presented in court.

The inherent humour of the author comes across in the lead character's dialogues and attitude. I have been following the author's Facebook page just to read the amusing publicity for upcoming books.

With nearly 20 books already in the series and still counting, you will not run out of books to read for a while and the book length is ideal to finish in a weekend. I have listed below the reasons why I love this series.

1. Andy's inherent charm and humour - While Andy's thoughts are of a self deprecating variety, he is confident and charming in his interactions. Being unnecessarily bizarre and sarcastic in certain situations heightens the dry humour.

2. Andy's lady love is Laurie Collins and he is totally over the top about her, whether it is her appearance, her skills or her charm. It is very sweet for a man in his mid thirties to be so crazy stupid in love. She is brave, capable, bad-ass lady, being an ex-cop, and protects as well as rescues him several times throughout the series, which also makes for a nice change from misogyny. She is also beautiful, warm and generous which makes her even more appealing.

                    

If Andy is crazy about his lady, he is even more crazy about his golden retriever Tara. And about dogs, in general. Many of his cases have a canine element and in one memorable case, he defends a dog (Yogi) in the courtroom!

              

3. The side characters are all contributing members to Andy's investigative and legal teams and each of them is fascinating in their own way. Take Edna, his assistant, who hates doing any work, has the biggest extended family in the world who she is always on the phone with and is a crossword puzzle wizard.

Or Marcus, who is an investigator as well as Andy's bodyguard, who is a man of very few mumbled words and is huge, scary and fearless. Andy's two best friends leech free meals off him at every opportunity and insult him mercilessly but always come through when he needs them.

His legal team members Hike and Ken are both talented but with eccentricities like pessimism and hypochondria. And my favourite is Sam, an accountant, hacker and unbeaten champion at song lyrics talking. What is not to love about this supporting cast?!

4. The meat and potatoes of the book is the courtroom drama. Whether it is a witness getting trapped into dramatic perjury or a sarcastic cross examination, the scenes ooze entertainment value and make me wonder why this series has not yet been picked up by a TV series producer.

5. The criminal case unfolds throughout the book and it is not easy to solve, even after learning the author's style after a few books. At times, the plot goes into incredible larger than life conspiracies and sometimes it is a good old fashioned revenge crime.

There are clues throughout the book and things have a tendency to get worse before getting better for the defendant. The eureka moment of the mystery is placed at the climax and unravels logically and will make you wonder, how come you didn't figure it out!

6. While the books do complete justice to the genre, I think the voice of Grover Gardener makes everything better in the audio books. He reads it like he really knows Andy's world and is as sarcastic as Andy. Why don't you try the first book in the series through a trial of Audible?

To conclude, if you are in the mood for entertaining legal fiction with a mystery element, this author's work should be your go-to. I would suggest that you follow the series through from the first book as Andy's personal circumstances change somewhat through the series.

I hope you enjoy befriending Andy and his gang!! The first three books in the series are below, start with these and comment below if you liked these books!

 

1. Open and Shut - Reopening of an old case to save Willie Miller (the most entertaining client ever) from the death row leads to reopening of an even older case and some personal drama for Andy.

2. First degree - When a burnt and decapitated corpse is discovered, the suspect/accused is unfortunately a lot closer to home. 

And this time getting a client off the charges is a personal necessity and not just a professional job!

3. Bury the lead - When a newspaper owner friend seeks legal help to protect his star reporter who is being used as the mouthpiece by a serial killer,


Andy hesitantly steps in but soon the reporter becomes more than a mouth piece - he gets arrested by the police as the serial killer. Will Andy come out of his mini retirement and rescue another client from the legal system?