fuonlyknew

Hunting Hour: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery
by Margaret Mizushima

I loved this book. I loved the twists and turns this book took you on. The characters are well developed and the story is well written.
~Because I said so — and other adventures in Parenting

The writing keeps the reader hooked and the mystery kept me guessing with a few surprise twists along the way just to make it even more interesting. I am fully invested in the characters now and am looking forward to future installments to see what happens next.
~Books a Plenty Book Reviews

Hunting Hour, a combination of police procedural and suspense, is an outstanding murder mystery – atmospheric, fast-paced, haunting, a clean read that was downright hard to put down.
~The Power of Words

Hunting Hour: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery
Mystery/Police Procedurals/Woman Sleuths
3rd in Series
Crooked Lane Books (August 8, 2017)
Hardcover: 320 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1683312772
E-Book ASIN: B06XWFGDY5

My Review

I enjoy crime fighting and search and rescue teams that include dogs as partners. Having enjoyed James Rollins’ Tucker Wayne series, Katie Ruggle’s Rocky Mountain K9 Unit series and another dynamite duo from Iris Johansen’s Eve Duncan series, I’m thrilled to say Hunting Hour is every bit as good.

  Margaret’s characters stand out and compliment each other to make the concern for them stronger. Her talent for putting words together makes the mystery deeper. And reading about the human and canine team at work is very powerful.

How the author shows me what’s happening instead of telling me is awesome. There’s a scene where Deputy Mattie Cobb and her dog, Robo, are setting out on a search and he is overly excited. She describes how he hover sits. Bam, that hit me. Never thought of putting it that way, but my dog does the same thing. He sits on command but his rear end never quite touches the ground. I’ve seen military and police dogs do it too. It takes patience and trust to control an excited dog with tons of energy to burn. I’d love to see this team in action.

She portrays Mattie as strong, owning her flaws and vulnerabilities and trying to deal with them. This makes Mattie good at her job, and it’s going to take everything she has to give to stop a killer. One girl is dead. And now another girl has gone missing, and this one is personal.

Loving a good mystery with lots of curve balls thrown at me, the author took me to another level. I never could figure out the motive behind the killings and who was doing them until right near the end. It’s nail biting suspense all the way.

This is the third book in the series. Not wanting you to be turned off by that, I’m telling you it doesn’t matter if you haven’t read the other books. You won’t be lost as this is a different case. Sure, there are some things I want to know about. The history between some characters, for one. I’ll be exploring that when I read the other books.

If you love a taut mystery loaded with suspense, and enjoy human/canine teams in action, do yourself a favor and grab this one. Or grab any of the others. You just need to have some reading time set aside as you won’t be able to put the book down.

5 Stars

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Synopsis

Deputy Mattie Cobb is in a dark place and has withdrawn from Cole Walker and his family to work on issues from her past. When she and her K-9 partner Robo get called to track a missing junior high student, they find the girl dead on Smoker’s Hill behind the high school, and Mattie must head to the Walker home to break the bad news. But that’s only the start of trouble in Timber Creek, because soon another girl goes missing—and this time it’s one of Cole’s daughters.

Knowing that each hour a child remains missing lessens the probability of finding her alive, Mattie and Robo lead the hunt while Cole and community volunteers join in to search everywhere. To no avail. It seems that someone has snatched all trace of the Walker girl from their midst, including her scent. Grasping at straws, Mattie and Robo follow a phoned-in tip into the dense forest, where they hope to find a trace of the girl’s scent and to rescue her alive. But when Robo does catch her scent, it leads them to information that challenges everything they thought they knew about the case.

Mattie and Robo must rush to hunt down the kidnapper before they’re too late in Hunting Hour, the third installment in critically acclaimed author Margaret Mizushima’s exhilarating mystery series.

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Author Margaret Mizushima

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the Timber Creek K-9 mysteries, which includes Killing Trail (Crooked Lane Books, 2015) nominated for an RT Reviewer’s Choice award for best first mystery, Stalking Ground (Crooked Lane Books, 2016) a finalist in the Colorado Book Awards mystery category, and Hunting Hour (Crooked Lane Books, 2017). She has a background in speech pathology and practiced in an acute care hospital before establishing her own rehabilitation agency. Currently, she balances writing with assisting her husband with their veterinary clinic and Angus cattle herd. She enjoys reading and hiking, and she lives on a small ranch in Colorado where she and her husband raised two daughters and a multitude of animals.

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Tour Participants

November 24 – Books,Dreams,Life – SPOTLIGHT

November 24 – Because I said so – Adventures in Parenting – REVIEW

November 25 – Books a Plenty Book Reviews – REVIEW

November 26 – The Power of Words – REVIEW

November 27 – Brooke Blogs – GUEST POST

November 28 – StoreyBook Reviews – GUEST POST

November 29 – The Book’s the Thing – REVIEW, GUEST POST

November 30 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

December 1 – A Holland Reads – SPOTLIGHT

December 2 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – INTERVIEW

December 3 – Mystery Thrillers and Romantic Suspense Reviews – CHARACTER GUEST POST

December 4 – FUONLYKNEW – REVIEW

December 5 – Cozy Up With Kathy – CHARACTER GUEST POST

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