Dogged Pursuit

For longtime fans of Andy Carpenter, Dogged Pursuit offers something genuinely rare: a return to the very beginning. Set before the series proper, this origin story follows a younger Andy as he walks away from a prosecutor's career to open his own defense practice — and, more importantly, walks into a shelter and meets Tara for the first time. It's a story about a man finding his purpose twice over, shaped by his instinct to fight for the overlooked and his inability to leave a dog behind. The stakes are personal before they're legal, and that emotional foundation gives everything that follows its weight.

What Rosenfelt does particularly well here is balance — the wit never undercuts the tension, and the courtroom drama never crowds out the warmth. His prose is clean and propulsive, built around Andy's sharp, self-deprecating interior voice, which is as entertaining on page one as it is thirty books in. For new readers, this is a genuinely welcoming entry point. For returning fans, it's a chance to revisit a character they already love and understand, finally, exactly how he got there.