"The Key," by Ferdinand Von Schirach, in Guilt, Knopf Books, 2012. I reviewed a story in Von Schirach's previous book Crime last year. He is a criminal attorney in Germany and all of his stories are narrated by an attorney named Von Schirach. leading to some debate as to fictional they are.
In most of the stories the lawyer is a minor character, but none more so than in "The Key." You could remove the part about Von Schirach without altering the plot a bit.
And speaking of plot: Frank and Atris are German criminals who visit Amsterdam to obtain, from a nasty and believable Russian general, some designer drugs that encourage women to do things they might otherwise prefer not to. Frank is the brains, Atris the brawn, and when Frank gets picked up by the cops things start to get very messy for Atris, and for the dog Frank has left in his care. Atris then finds him in a deepening pool of trouble with a series of sinister people.
At this point I need to say that if cruelty to animals is a turn-off for you, you do NOT want to read this story.
There is a flaw in this story: in order to make everything turn out okay a certain person has to perform out of character - or at least to have hidden reserves which we had not been left to expect. It made it hard to suspend disbelief, but I enjoyed the story anyway.
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