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The first in an intended series featuring Meg Jennings and her search and rescue Labrador, Hawk, and their work with an elite FBI K-9 team, this novel comes to us under that name of Sara Driscoll. But that is a pseudonym for the already successful writing team of Jen J. Danna and Ann Vanderlaan, authors of the series about the forensic team of Abbott and Lowell. This writing team is exceptional in two ways: they are more than competent writers and they are sticklers for accurate and extremely detailed research into crime-fighting strategies and skills. So it is a pleasure to welcome them back as they branch out into an altogether different set of scenarios.
Meg and Hawk open the novel in the midst of tracking a serial rapist in the Washington D.C. area whose latest victim actually fought back effectively enough to scare him off. We are quickly drawn into the world of human/canine teams and their inner workings – an arena in which I, for one, needed a ton of background information. Driscoll weaves the information seamlessly into the excitement of the search and chase which makes both the learning and the reading fly along. The pace is terrific and readers' sympathies will quickly lie with these specialized crime-fighters who are limited in number, hugely trained, and basically on call 24-7. We meet two or three other K-9 pairs who work alongside or in relief of Meg and Hawk. All of them are unique in the ways they operate best but what they have in common is the enormous bond between dog and human that has to be the foundation for everything they do.
Almost as soon as the rapist is caught and arrested, Meg and Hawk are called out to an entirely different kind of crime scene: a bomb has gone off in a large government building on the National Mall and the victims are not only the officials and staff who work there but also a large number of school children on a fifth grade field trip. Here we learn the most about how these pairs of sleuths work together and what drives them to continue through exhaustion and frustration, horror and sorrow.
A large number of characters becomes involved in trying to figure out who the perpetrator is and how to stop further bombs from being set off. Driscoll weaves them in expertly and shows readers how the cooperation among law forces and families, friends and acquaintances can all play a part.
There are moments when Meg's emotions get the better of her and even make her less able to continue but she seems to be tuned to watching out for that – emotions being an all-too-natural facet of human beings – and to knowing how to turn to ways that have worked in the past to keep her on track.
This looks like the beginning of a very successful series not least because Driscoll (just like Danna and Vanderlaan) writes movingly about what she loves.
§ Diana Borse is retired from teaching English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and savoring the chance to read as much as she always wanted to.
Reviewed by Diana Borse, November 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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