Act of Revenge Author: Robert K. Tanenbaum
	Book Information Publisher: Harpercollins Book Type: Hardcover Rating: 5 ISBN-13: 9780060192181 - ISBN-10: 0060192186 Publication Date: 5/1999 Pages: 402 Book Reviews

With over seven million copies of his novels in print, national bestselling author Robert K. Tanenbaum has consistently demonstrated his rare ability to write colorful, morally complex, deeply authentic, and highly suspenseful thrillers.

In Act of Revenge, his finest and most dramatically rich novel to date, Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi, the married couple who have been described by the Chicago Tribune as "the most interesting pair of characters in the suspense genre," must pursue, survive, and triumph over two of New York's toughest and most dangerous criminal forcesthe Mafia and the Chinese gangs.

As a chief assistant district attorney with a formidable, hard-earned reputation as a brilliant and fearless prosecutor, Karp takes on a difficult, complicated case involving the slaying of Ed Catalano, a capo in the Bollano family. At first the killing appears to be a continuation of old-style wars between Mob families, until Willie Lai, leader of a Chinese gang called the Ghost Dragons, tells Karp that he and his cohorts were involved. Then the case takes yet another unexpected turnKarp's twelve-year-old daughter witnesses a gang killing in Chinatown and is now a target herself. And complicating the investigation further is the obstructive and politically ambitious U.S. attorney who wants to use the Mob murder to advance his own career.

Karp must discover whether the Mob and the Chinese gangs have gone to war as allies or enemies, who is trying to kill his daughter, who really murdered Catalano, and whether the war will create a bloody battlefield that could engulf the whole city.

His wife, Marlene, a private security consultant who specializes in protecting women from stalkers and murderous significant others, has plenty to handle with her own family, yet is drawn into an investigation of the decades-old death of a notorious Mob lawyer. As she digs further, getting closer to the Mob's secret and shocking motives behind the murder, she, too, finds her life in jeopardy.

As the danger, violence, and complexity of their parallel investigations escalate, Karp and Marlene risk more than they ever have, driven by their moral code and passion for the law.

Act of Revenge is Robert K. Tanenbaum's most full-blooded and passionate book yet, a story that raises his fiction to a new, unforgettable level. The novel combines classic storytelling with real-life characters and issues that matter now, and always will.