Immoral Certainty

Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi, Book 3

By: Robert K. Tanenbaum

Narrated by: Traber Burns

Butch Karp's career prosecuting New York's worst criminals takes a chilling turn when a series of ghastly child murders opens a window into the city’s hellish underworld. Karp and love-interest Marlene Ciampi pursue a psychopath known to his young victims as the Bogeyman, but what they find is more threatening than a lone predator. To stop the evil they unearth will take more than just courage in the courtroom; the two will need to follow a sinister trail into New York City's darkest corners, where the law is powerless to protect them.

©2013 Robert K. Tanenbaum (P)2013 AudioGO

not for the weak at heart

The story is gruesome about child abuse. Lots of mature, street language that made the plot seem real.

Fantastic story

Once again Robert weaves a tale with seemingly random characters but in the end they are all related somehow.

Spell Bound

Excellent reading with many twist and turns. A series of events with exciting characters. Great foreshadowing.

Entertaining Series

Although Immoral Certainty is one of Robert K. Tanenbaum's older Butch Karp novels it is well worth a listen by fans, or even listeners new to the series.
First published in 1991, this book goes back to the earlier days of the Karp-Ciampi association. Admittedly, this oddball couple may be an acquired taste. But their sizzling relationship is buttressed by a deep respect for each other's legal abilities. The author's own experience and understanding of the arcane world of the legal system enables him to lift improbable plot into the realm of logic and feasibility.
In fact, as Tanenbaum points out, the art of successfully nabbing criminals consists in a large part of the attending to boring minutiae by the foot soldiers of the prosecutorial staff. In the writer's own words, "The law radiates tedium the way a ballet does grace or an orchestra harmony." Fortunately for the listener, Tanenbaum sweeps us through the crucial humdrum of a criminal trial and highlights the nexus, so we all can delude ourselves, briefly, that we are as clever as a Butch Karp or a Marlene Ciampi. He connects the dots for us even as we are seduced by his seemingly far-fetched plots and sub-plots.
In this book, Marlene becomes acquainted with firearms and we are introduced to her bewitched fascination with their violent potential. "I don't know," she says after an initial visit to the firing range, "it had an effect on me I didn't expect." It turns out she's a natural. It is one of the ongoing talents of her character that becomes both useful to her and repelling to this listener.
Tanenbaum's characters are always interesting, although occasionally conveniently naïve. An example is the schoolteacher Anna who buys her sociopath boyfriend's explanation that the reason he uses a variety of credit cards with other people's names on them is because they are "corporate cards." True, the author says she has a reasonably sharp brain that is disengaged in the boyfriend's company "in favor of another set of organs entirely." But Anna is not unattractive and this descent into bimbo-ism stretches the imagination.
Yet overall, the writer pulls this intense story together. Tanenbaum is always engaging.

Traber Burns was very good with the delivery of the story

one of his best

I love Robert Tanenbaum & his tales of Butch Carp. This is one of his best ever. Lots of twists & turns. A little too much of the depravity of mankind.