Tracking a Murder

Scent of Murder [by] Cynthia G. Alwyn

New York; Thomas Dunne Books [2001]

0-312-26559-X; $23.95

Brenna learned to use dogs to track the victims of kidnappings from her mentor, Aaron, who gave her her first tracking dog, Sabrina, called Brie.  When she and her new boss, Jett, who runs a tracking service out of a Victorian in Sacramento, go to Seattle to track a kidnap victim, 4-year-old Zoe Hendricks, for a friend in law enforcement, Brenna inadvertently runs into the kidnapper carrying the little girl. He throws the little girl into a river and runs away.  Brenna runs after the girl, jumping in the river right after Brie.  She manages to save the little girl, but at the expense of the dog she loves and called “Funny Face.” 

When the friend, Garrett, comes to Sacramento with the cremains of Brie – he thought it might be best that Brenna not have to travel back with the body of her dead friend and partner – he has news for them: 

they had found a note at the house taunting the family, which they hadn’t found.  They also found that the box which was to be her death chamber was booby-trapped.  It looks like the kidnapper is not done yet.  Certainly Zoe’s family didn’t think so – they’ve vanished.

When Brenna got back to Sacramento, she plunged back into her work, leading new dog training, and joining in a child safety fair at a local mall with the dog team.  The fair activity is broken off as the team is sent out on another kidnapping case, this time in their area. Brenna is with her other dog, a Bouvier des Flandres named Feather.  The case seems curiously like the one in Seattle.  The outcome isn’t so cheery, though.  When they find the little girl, Leanne, she is dead.

When Jett calls her in the middle of the night, Brenna isn’t happy.  She has an e-mail from Gideon – the man who kidnapped Zoe and Leanne.  It’s all a game to him, and Leanne didn’t really count, which makes Brenna livid.  There is some banter referring to the game, which, it turned out, their computer person had been playing with Gideon for a couple of weeks, since Brenna had off-handedly told him to answer her e-mail.  He had no idea it was related to their case. 

Because of this computer conversation, Jett’s company gets its own fulltime FBI agent.  As they have more conversations, they begin to narrow down who this person might be.  Gideon gives them clues, most of which he doesn’t expect them to understand, but they do, as they add their surmises to the facts uncovered by the FBI. Their group grows by one when Rob Garrett of Seattle joins them.  He has been fired from his agency because he believes that Zoe’s kidnapper is not finished yet, even though his sheriff does.

Gideon disappears for a while, and their lives can go on, but when the sheriff of McEntyre County, Texas calls, just after a taunting – and angry – call from Gideon, they know they will be off and running to find another little girl, this time named Denise. They are transported to Texas via a USAF C-141, where they are met by McEntyre County deputies and they drive to the locale where Gideon left his taunting notes, and they set off to find Denise.

This is an exciting novel, in which you learn a great deal about dog search-and-rescue, and meet a great set of characters, both human and canine, whom you come to care about very much.  This could have been the beginning of a great series, but it seems to have not gone anywhere, for which I am very sorry.  It was a great read. Recommended. ~ lss-r

_________________

This is a library book.