BENDING THE PAW

A police officer and her canine partner search for a body missing from a gruesome crime scene.

A slasher has executed a St. Valentine’s Day massacre of his own in Fort Worth. A call from Detective Audrey Jackson summons Officer Megan Luz and Brigit, her K-9 teammate, to the scene, a suburban kitchen covered in blood. It’s not the way Megan pictured spending the night of her engagement to Seth, her firefighter boyfriend, but Seth has a dog of his own, and he understands the importance of K-9 teams. When Megan gets to the scene, poor homeowner Shelby Olsen is distraught by the gruesome mess but even more upset that Greg, her loving husband, is missing. She asks Audrey and Megan where Greg could be. The two don’t know how to tell her that, given the blood volume they see, it really doesn’t matter where Greg is any more. Eager to impress her mentor and prove that she’s fit to fill her shoes one day, Megan digs into the case of the apparent murder and the missing body. But all the obvious leads go nowhere, and Megan isn’t sure what’s next. Interspersed chapters adopt the perspectives of the slasher, who’s mainly keeping a low profile at a hotel, and Brigit, who’s equally concerned with tracking the killer and scoring some liver treats. At length Megan’s investigation leads her to the one and only possible conclusion.

The procedural emphasis continues to set this series apart from other dog mysteries.