Renegade

Manhattan assistant district attorney Kate Stone, the narrator of this middling series launch from bestseller Allen (Jailhouse Lawyer, with James Patterson), is frustrated by the acquittal of affluent Max James, who assaulted a masseuse after she refused his sexual demands. Adding injury to insult, James confronts Stone after the verdict, and she responds to his shoving her in the back by punching him, a moment captured on video. Stone’s boss, who’s unusually hands-on for someone in charge of hundreds of attorneys, makes Stone attending an anger management support group a condition of her staying employed. At one such session, she’s approached by a doctor who invites her to join a group of vigilantes who offer her a chance for an extralegal revenge on James, which, inevitably, she accepts. Increasingly unlikely plot twists undermine credibility, as do certain questionable legal details (a defense attorney in a rape case is somehow allowed to depose the victim before trial). Even the cliff-hanger ending comes with a totally unsurprising reveal. Hopefully, Allen, herself an attorney with impressive legal credentials, will do better next time. Agent: Jack Heller, Assemble Media. (Mar.)