Robert K Tanenbaum Books in Order

Former Manhattan prosecutor Robert K. Tanenbaum chronicles the 1971 ambush murders of NYPD officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini, following the manhunt for Black Liberation Army gunmen and the hard fought trial that tested New York's politics, policing, and courts.

In the first Butch Karp novel, a brutal robber murders two people during a botched holdup, then tries to game the system by pleading insanity. Newly assigned homicide prosecutor Karp, with rising star Marlene Ciampi, fights both the killer and a cynical district attorney bureaucracy.

Croatian terrorists hijack a plane and plant bombs across the United States, one of which kills an NYPD bomb squad officer in the Bronx. As Karp prosecutes the surviving suspects, he and Marlene uncover a tangle of church politics, intelligence agencies, and old war crimes that powerful people would rather keep buried.

This true crime account follows Charles Yukl, a seemingly shy piano and voice teacher whose first murder leads to a disastrous plea bargain and early release. Years later he kills again, and Tanenbaum uses the case to show how a flawed justice system can turn one tragedy into two.

A sadistic child killer known as the Bogeyman stalks New York, and separate child abuse and homicide cases suddenly appear linked. Karp and Marlene plunge into a world of cult like day care centers, mob interests, and terrified parents as they race to stop a predator who preys on the most vulnerable.

Karp is being groomed by wealthy power brokers to run for Manhattan district attorney just as a string of vigilante killings targets drug dealers. While a handful of Harlem cops cross the line in the name of justice, Karp, Marlene, and a few honest detectives must expose a political conspiracy behind the murders.

When basketball superstar Marion Simmons is found shot dead beside a cache of cocaine, the killing threatens to upend the sport. Pushed out of the district attorney's office, Karp goes undercover on a pro team while Marlene chases leads in Brooklyn, uncovering point shaving, mob loans, and a web of political corruption.

A Turkish diplomat is gunned down on his way to the United Nations, and suspicion falls on an Armenian nationalist seeking revenge for genocide. Karp and Marlene dig past that easy story, tracing the murder into a maze of stolen art, international lobbying, and backroom deals that reach far beyond New York.

Called to Washington to serve as counsel to a congressional investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Karp expects politics and paperwork. Instead he stumbles onto buried files, dangerous witnesses, and a plot that suggests the forces behind Dallas are still active, putting his career and his family in the crosshairs.

Now in private practice, Karp sues to restore the reputation of New York's ousted chief medical examiner, suspecting the firing hides a larger scheme at City Hall. Meanwhile Marlene launches a small agency that protects women from stalkers, drawing her into a women's shelter case and a police scandal that converge in startling ways.

Back as head of the Homicide Bureau, Karp personally prosecutes a serial killer of elderly Black women whose lawyer plans an insanity defense. At the same time Marlene's security firm takes on several stalking cases that turn deadly, forcing the couple to ask how far they can go to stop predators who hide behind legal loopholes.

An elderly Jewish couple are murdered in their small Manhattan deli, with anti Israel graffiti left above the bodies. As community tensions between Jews and Muslims erupt, Karp pursues clues that point to a wider terror plot, while Marlene shelters a runaway Arab teenager whose own secrets tie directly into the case.

Karp prosecutes a brutal mob execution that may be part of a larger gang war, while Marlene is hired to re examine a decades old apparent suicide from the Empire State Building. When their twelve year old daughter Lucy witnesses a killing at an Asian shopping center, the family is drawn into intersecting schemes of revenge.

A dead newborn found in the trash ignites public fury, and Karp's boss orders the prosecution of the baby's fifteen year old mother for homicide. With media and politics swirling, Marlene takes on a different tragedy, and soon the couple find their marriage and their daughter Lucy pulled into a case about blame, mercy, and what justice really demands.

In a New York gripped by IPO money and widening inequality, Karp confronts two controversial shootings that raise charges of racism and police corruption. As he battles over the proper use of the death penalty, Marlene rides a wave of sudden paper wealth, and their gifted daughter becomes entangled with a serial killer preying on the homeless.

While the Karp family enjoys a quiet Long Island summer, news arrives that their friends in a West Virginia coal town have been slaughtered. Appointed special prosecutor, Karp enters a world of corrupt union bosses, company men, and gun thugs, fighting to solve the murders and keep his own family from becoming the next targets.

Convicted killer Felix Tighe escapes from prison obsessed with destroying the people who put him there, starting with the NYPD detectives who arrested him. As Karp chases a new terror plot tied to a radical Islamist he once prosecuted, Tighe closes in on teenage Lucy, turning the case into a personal battle for the Karp family.

The shooting of a flashy rap mogul pulls Karp into the brutal politics of the music business, where rivalries and money hide deeper crimes. While Marlene and Lucy are in New Mexico on a retreat, he uncovers ties between the killing, a charismatic would be mayor, and a church abuse scandal that reaches into city power structures.

A Brooklyn jogger's rape case ends with convictions that are later thrown out, and the freed attackers sue the city for millions, claiming they were innocent. Karp suspects a corrupt alliance between a grandstanding lawyer and local politicians, even as a separate terror cell prepares a New Year's Eve attack that puts the Karp family in underground danger.

When sociopathic former mayoral candidate Andrew Kane escapes from prison and a busload of schoolchildren are murdered, Karp knows his old enemy has allied with terrorists. Juggling that manhunt with a cold case against a wealthy businessman whose wife vanished years ago, he watches Marlene face threats from extremists and foreign agents determined to silence her.

Still recovering from an assassination attempt, Karp uncovers a shadowy cartel that uses terror attacks to push the country toward authoritarian rule. His investigation into the bombing of schoolchildren overlaps with Marlene's search in Idaho for a missing college student, while Lucy and her allies race to stop another planned assassination in Manhattan.

A radical academic, married to a rising politician, claims God told her to kill her three children and pleads insanity, leaving Karp to argue that she knew exactly what she was doing. At the same time a homegrown jihadist bombs a Manhattan synagogue, and the Karp family uncovers a larger plot aimed at crippling the city's emergency services.

A young actress from Spanish Harlem is found shot in the penthouse of a famous Broadway producer, and Karp takes the case after the original prosecutor dies under suspicious circumstances. As he pushes a high profile trial that challenges a slick defense team, international conspirators kidnap Lucy, forcing Karp and Marlene to solve deadly riddles before a wider catastrophe unfolds.

Charismatic mosque leader Sharif Jabbar sits in Manhattan's jail awaiting trial on new terrorism charges after a previous case collapsed, and Karp is determined not to lose him again. While a radical defense lawyer paints Jabbar as a victim, Marlene investigates the murder of a society woman and a vanished debutante, uncovering a hidden world of high end escort work that intersects with extremist politics.

Months after a brutal double homicide, timid Bronx teenager Felix Acevedo confesses and is indicted in a blaze of headlines, but Karp is convinced the case was rushed. As a real killer keeps stalking women, Marlene's investigation pits her against a drug addicted psychopath and a bitter detective who will sabotage evidence, lie, and kill to protect his own reputation.

When parents let their ten year old son die of a treatable cancer after a manipulative preacher urges them to rely only on prayer, Karp prosecutes them for reckless manslaughter. The same evangelist has secretly insured the boy's life for his own benefit, and Marlene's trip to dig into his past in Memphis collides with the plans of a deadly Russian operative who wants revenge on the Karp family.

This nonfiction narrative revisits the 1963 Career Girls Murders on Manhattan's Upper East Side and the coerced confession that sent a young Black man to prison. Following prosecutor Mel Glass and other lawyers who refused to look away, Tanenbaum shows how the case exposed deep police misconduct and helped pave the way for the Supreme Court's Miranda ruling.

A waterfront union whistleblower is gunned down soon after accusing longshore boss Charlie Vitteli of rigging elections and stealing from his own members. Karp takes on a case that echoes classic dockside tragedies, probing bribery, witness intimidation, and another suspicious death as he looks for the one weakness that can topple a ruthless labor kingpin.

After the director of the CIA dies under suspicious circumstances just before he can testify about a terrorist attack in Chechnya, Karp finds himself battling powerful figures in Washington. As he pursues a murder case that threatens a sitting administration, his own daughter is taken hostage overseas, forcing him to fight for the truth in court while racing to save his family.

A bomb explodes at a Manhattan book event for a Holocaust survivor who champions charter schools, killing her and others. A neo Nazi seems like the obvious culprit, but Karp suspects the attack hides corruption inside the teachers union, and his prosecution of the case unfolds alongside threats to his twin sons and a bitter fight over education politics.

A decorated Army veteran unexpectedly guns down a colonel in New York and claims he was the subject of secret mind control experiments. Backed by a high powered defense lawyer with political ties, he becomes the centerpiece of Karp's murder case, while an investigative reporter suggests the shooting is tied to a deeper pattern of government corruption that could put everyone involved in danger.

After a white police officer shoots the unarmed son of a prominent Black pastor in Harlem, protests explode and a militant group begins targeting cops. Karp, Marlene, and their team must separate evidence from spin, prosecuting a brutal crime while uncovering a plot to use justified anger as cover for a campaign of revenge killings.

This true crime book revisits the 1969 assassination of union reformer Jock Yablonski and the murders of his wife and daughter in rural Pennsylvania. Working alongside legendary prosecutor Richard Sprague, Tanenbaum traces a nine year investigation that climbs from bumbling hired killers to the United Mine Workers president who ordered the hits.

Drawing on his work for Congress, Tanenbaum lays out a prosecutorial case that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He walks readers through disputed medical evidence, witness accounts, and the flaws in official investigations, arguing that key government agencies misled the public from the start.