It should have been an open and shut case.  Djordje Karavitch and three other Croation nationalists hijack a plane and take it to Paris in demonstration, hoping for a free Croatia.  In the lap of one hijacker is a bomb and, Karavitch says, there are more bombs in the city (the city being New York), and if their demands aren’t met, those bombs will go off.  As a show of how serious they are, the police are given the location of one of the bombs.  What they are not given is information leading to the bomb’s time-delay fuse, so when they “defuse” and open the device, thinking it’s safe, what they’ve really done is start the timer and soon two NY cops are in the hospital and one is dead.

Assistant DA Butch Karp intends to prosecute this case to the fullest and put these people behind bars.  The only problem is, his boss DA Sandy Bloom, FBI agent Pillman, and, it seems, the entire legal system of the United States is out to stop him.  Someone sure doesn’t want this case prosecuted, and Karp and his allies, Assistant DA Marlene Ciampa (who is also Karp’s girlfriend), and his colleagues Guma and Newbury, will help in any way they can.  Karp sets off in a battle for justice against the police, the DA’s office, the government, Cuban gangsters, the Church, and even a group of Israelis hunting Nazi war criminals.  Seems who- and whatever Djordje Karavitch really is, a whole lot of people don’t want him to talk.

Robert K. Tanenbaum’s DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE was not at all what I expected it would be.  When the hijackers were captured only a few chapters into the book, I thought Tanenbaum was setting me up for a long, but no doubt interesting, courtroom drama.  I’d have liked that.  I like courtroom dramas.  I like the back and forth, I like the intense dialogue, I like the legal maneuverings.  I like, well, the drama.  What I did not expect, at all at all, was this.

Tananbaum has weaved such a complex plot, I feared, at times, I would lose the sense of it and therefore find myself lost in the middle of this novel, but he was careful in tying up all the loose ends and detailing pretty well, through the characters’ dialogue, who was doing what to whom and how it all fit together.  I liked his characters, although I think Karp was a bit too straight an arrow.  And something of a cliché.  Separated from his wife, Karp’s got the bare apartment with absolutely no furniture except for his bed.  He’s got the girlfriend, the loyal team of friends, and his boss is always dogging his trail, trying to undermine Karp’s every attempt to see that justice is done, and seemingly for no other reason than because Karp is just too dern stubborn.  Instead of letting the easy cases walk, Karp is intent on doing his job and prosecuting criminals.  He refuses to see the politics of the game.

And what’s it gotten him so far?  Nothing.  Because he’s just too stubborn!!!

The other characters are all what you’d expect in a novel like this, as well.  The friends are perpetual jokers and slightly less capable lawyers than Karp, obviously, while the girlfriend is just as smart as Karp, only, well, she’s a girl.  Sure, she’s just as good at the job as Karp, but come on, be real.  The only reason she’s in this story is to help Karp when he needs it.

Tanenbaum’s prose is very easy to read and I had fun with it.  While he’s not so much on character, he’s got the prose down, and he kept me interested every step of the way.

“On Monday morning, butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi and several hundred other assistant district attorneys, the district attorney himself and his aides and assistants, learned judges by the dozens and clerks and secretaries in the hundreds, and brigades of police, and regiments of witnesses and victims, the bored and the anguished, squads of jurors good and true, and uncounted lawyers, young and harried or suave and grave, depending on whether they worked for the poor or the rich, and the ladies and gentlemen of the press, merciless and cynical; and, of course, a varied mob of criminals, the cause and purpose of this whole cavalcade, the petty thugs, the thieves and robbers, whether by stealth or weaponry or clever papers, the whres of both sexes, the cold killers, the hot killers, the rapists and torturers of the helpless, the justly accused, the falsely accused, together with their keeps, parole officers, social workers, enemies, friend and relations, converged, all of them, on a single seventeen-story gray stone building located at 100 Centre Street on the island of Manhattan, there to prod into sullen wakefulness that great beast, the Law.”

So, while I didn’t get the intense courtroom drama I was hoping for (the novel ended before the trial even began), I still got a very interesting and well-written book.  Tanenbaum had a car chase, a shoot-out, double-crosses and pranks, secrets and scams, tricks and sex and intrigue.  At times it almost seemed as if DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE was going to be Tanenbaum’s last novel and he wanted to pack it full of everything he could think of.  And all in only 296 pages.

And there’s the humor.  In the midst of all this killing and lying and chasing and blowing up of policemen, Tanenbaum managed to keep the tone fairly light, not just through the actions and dialogue of his characters, but in his own narrative prose.

“Sharkey ignored her and helped his partner heave Wharton up on his wobbly legs.  People who graduate from law school usually miss the experience of being hit in the face by a big cop, although there are those who would like it to be made part of the bar examination.  It certainly made Conrad Wharton forget about issuing any orders.”

Having enjoyed DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE so much--despite the total lack of believability in the main characters and how awesome they believe they are--if this is the tone of Tanenbaum’s other work, I’d be glad to read more of it.  He writes like a man just having fun with it, but with the talent to back it up, and that’s all I ask in a novel.  DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE has its issues, for sure--suspension of disbelief being the most major one--but for a novel to pass the time with, one that won’t bore you at any point, one that doesn’t slow down long enough to bore you, this is just about as fun a novel as you’ll find.  Very much recommended.

Recommended: Yes