Welcome to Colorado in the snow, the spectacular and dangerous setting of the tenth Timber Creek K-9 Mystery. Police officer Mattie Walker and her husband Cole Walker are hiking in a canyon with Cole’s daughters and police dog Robo. Suddenly they hear a DYING CRY. Mattie decides to spare the young girls any terrible sights and sends them back to the sports lodge with Cole to get help. She pushes forward with her German Shepherd Robo and they almost walk under a rockslide. First, Mattie spots a still figure on the ground, dark against the snow. Then the rocks cover the person. This begins another case for Timber Creek County law enforcement. The deceased turns out to be a banker called Tom Murphy, married with kids. His wife, as it happens, works in Cole’s veterinary clinic. The other bankers out for a team building day, claim Tom didn’t feel well and turned for home. Nobody thought to go with him, which is totally the wrong procedure. Even so, that doesn’t explain how he fell off a cliff in a different area. There’s no doubt it was murder. This detailed police procedural follows Mattie and her talented K-9 as they unearth suspects, motives and means. Detective Stella LoSasso, Sheriff McCoy and the new Chief Deputy Brody – who seems extremely competent - work together well, and Mattie has to defer to all except the deputy. The issue of murder is a troubling one for family members, even more than accidental death. I love the overarching effect of the snow, which means people leave tracks, workers slowly freeze and evidence gets buried. The highly trained dog is well able to sniff out clues and follow invisible trails. It’s safe to say the case would not get solved without him, or not nearly so fast. He is also protective and trained to find injured people, so Robo is a great all-rounder. Dog lovers as well as crime fiction fans will have a good time with this read. Margaret Mizushima reared her family in Colorado and has now moved to the Pacific Northwest. She has created characters to cheer for, with human lives and motives, and DYING CRY is a splendid addition to the series.
A killer lurks in Colorado’s snowy high country in Dying Cry, the tenth thrilling installment of award-winning author Margaret Mizushima’s Timber Creek K-9 mystery series.Newlyweds Mattie and Cole Walker are teaching Cole’s daughters how to snowshoe in a remote canyon when a shattering scream pierces the air. They know that somewhere ahead, someone has been injured or worse. Cole takes the girls while Mattie and Robo go deeper into the canyon to search for the source of the scream. From a distance, Mattie and Robo see a shadowy figure at the base of a cliff, but a rockslide buries the person under layers of stone and shale before they can provide help. Desperate to uncover the individual in case they’re still alive under the rock, their efforts are in vain. The victim is already dead. When they investigate the canyon rim from which the person fell, they discover evidence that indicates the fall was no accident. To make matters worse, the victim was one of Cole’s friends. The Timber Creek County investigative team springs into action, uncovering a trail of greed that leads to a killer who threatens Mattie’s cherished new family and tests her with the most difficult task she’s faced in her duty as a K-9 handler.
Audiobook Narrator- Nancy Wu
No excerpt available.
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