CITIZEN K-9

Hired to help the Paterson Police Department close cold cases, the K Team and their human companions dive into a mysterious disappearance from a high school reunion.

Seven years ago, car salesman Chris Vogel led dental hygienist Kim Baskin out from the celebration of the 15th anniversary of their graduation from Paterson Eastside High and off to a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway, where the police found his abandoned car the next day but no further trace of the two classmates. Impressed by their earlier successes, Capt. Pete Stanton wants retired officers Corey Douglas and Laurie Collins, together with their bone-crunching investigator, Marcus Clark, to reopen the case. Following information that Vogel, addicted to both drugs and gambling, had double-crossed Espinosa, the one-named dealer he worked for, the team quickly narrows their list of suspects to one. The question isn’t whodunit but why—especially why whoever was responsible for the double disappearance left a single playing card, the king of clubs, behind in Vogel’s car. Deciding that it’s less important to convict Espinosa in this particular case than to get the goods on him for one of his unrelated criminal enterprises, Corey, who thrives on stirring up trouble, provokes Espinosa to set freelance killer Z, née Leonard Zamora, against the investigators in the hope of gathering new evidence, or at least providing the canine members of the team with opportunities to rescue their considerably more fragile human colleagues. In the end, the normally reliable Rosenfelt provides an explanation for the apparently random cross-country crime wave linked to other playing cards that’s so lame readers will have to decide whether to feel insulted or amused.

A forgettable mystery, lame wisecracks, and all too little work for those lovable canines.