Customer Reviews

Tainted Evidence

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Law enforcement used to be an all male society. I guess it still is. Women are considered incompetent until proven otherwise and are thwarted by their colleagues whenever possible. This is a NY cop story. A black drug dealer is holed up in a condemned tenement. Detectives set up a raid, it is botched, 5 cops are shot.For political reasons the case is given to a female DA who is also a wife and mother. She faces intense pressure from the police brass and her colleagues. The case takes strange turns, the suspense goes up and up as does the pressure on the DA. Her chief witness, one of the detectives, has eyes for her. I found this an original and fascinating story and hard to put down.Tainted Evidence

This is my first book by Robert Daley and am glad it was given to me and I didn't spend money on it. This is basically a story about the problems in Harlem between blacks and the white cops who work in that neighborhood. Mr. Daley had a good story but he starts to tell you what happened and ends up telling pages of information about various NY neighborhoods, where they are located, what type of people live there, if houses are kept up, etc., jumps around until the crime actually gets to the shooting and trial, you don't know what is going on.
He tells bits and pieces, tells a bit about various people, never finishes anything so you get lost as to where this book is going.

He has the two main cop characters start to tell stories about other cases at times but never finishes any of them. Mostly he has Muldoon spouting filthy words and putting down any and everyone he comes in contact with, drinking constantly even on the job. It makes it hard to sympathize with the guy when he loses his job basically because he is a slob who thinks he can do what he wants, no one really likes him and the mayor and police commissioner need a scape goat.

Muldoon's partner Barone would be more likeable as he seems to be a good cop and tries to keep Muldoon in control but he also is a womanizer and it is hard to feel anything but disgust for him and pity for his family whom he considers last in his daily life. He is too busy looking for his next sexual conquest and making sure he is dressed to the nines. He seems to think little of his wife and uses her mostly it seems as a housekeeper, babysitter and little else.

Then there is Karen, the leading lady and acting DA. She is so busy preening and congratulating herself on just about every decision she makes, that you want to throw up especially after she is so happy with herself because she slept with "old quick zipper" the first time with no regard for her husband or kids. She is entitled because she has worked hard and besides her husband will never know. She became much more likeable after she loses the all important case and is taken down a notch or two.
All in all, this could have been a good book but too much jerking around with this story and truly gross people. No resolution to anything. The sleazy lawyer who defends the criminal is a liar who doesn't care about justice or the truth and the judge is gutless. The former assistant DA was a real jerk and liar who undermined his own office and staff. No wonder people hate lawyers when they read ridiculous stories like this where nothing is sacred, not the law, not faithfulness to family and spouses, not to your fellow workers, nothing. The best people in the story was Larry Coombs, Hank, Hilary and Jackie. Karen did not deserve any of them.