Hunting Hour

3.5 Stars (will be released 8/8/17)

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book. It was a quick, fun read that kept my attention. When I got the book I didn’t know that this was book 3 in a series. While there are a few references to previous storylines, I didn’t feel that I was missing anything or lost in this story by not having read the previous two books.
The story follows Mattie, a sheriff’s deputy and her K-9 partner Robo, living in a small town in Colorado. Mattie and Rob are asked to track a missing junior high student. They find the missing girl dead behind the high school. As they begin to look into the girl’s promiscuous lifestyle and the older boys that “dated” her, another young girl goes missing. This time, it’s close to home for Mattie.

The new missing girl, Sophie Walker, is the daughter of the local veterinarian that Mattie recently dated and grew to know and love. Mattie and Robo enlist the help of town locals, other deputies and additional K-9 dogs to search for Sophie, to no avail. The main suspects are a high school boy, a registered sex offender, the daughter of the dead girl that Mattie suspects of molesting his own daugther and a customer of the veterinarian that has been acting odd lately and interacted with Sophie the day before she disappeared.

For as risqué as the themes in the book are, the book is actually very tame. Many of the down and dirty details of the crime and dead girl’s life are glossed over. Even the issues of Mattie’s prior molestation by her own father are only hinted at and not dealt with directly. While the writing is well done and the story is engaging, I would consider this more “mystery lite”, rather than hard-hitting, gritty mysteries, but it’s still good. I recommend reading this book.