Burning Ridge

July 9, 2018
When veterinarian Cole Walker and his two young daughters go for a trail ride in Mizushima’s agreeable fourth Timber Creek K-9 mystery (after 2017’s Hunting Hour), they make a gruesome discovery: a man’s charred boot with a decomposing foot still in it. Deputy Mattie Cobb of the Timber Creek, Colo., sheriff’s office and her canine partner, Robo, go looking for the rest of the body. Once they find it, the victim turns out to have a personal link to Mattie’s own troubled past. She and her brother were separated as small children after their father went to prison for assaulting their mother, who later abandoned them. Mattie’s interactions with her colleagues and friends, particularly with Cole, to whom she’s romantically attracted, ring true. Robo, meanwhile, comes across as a real dog without any of the anthropomorphic characteristics that many genre authors impose upon animals. Readers will be fascinated to learn how search dogs are trained and to see one in action. Mizushima delivers a sufficiently complicated plot, well-developed interpersonal relationships, awe-inspiring landscape descriptions, and some excruciatingly vivid action. Agent: Terrie Wolf, AKA Literary Management.

July 15, 2018
After a slow adjustment to life in Timber Creek, Colorado, the very private Deputy Mattie Cobb is finally starting to lower her defenses and get to know the people of her community.Mattie had a difficult childhood. She was raised by foster mother Mama T after being abandoned by her parents. That was probably for the best given that her birthparents seem to have been involved in criminal activities. Although things worked out, Mattie doesn't revisit the past much, and her friends and colleagues know little about her beyond what she chooses to tell. But her relationship with single father and local veterinarian Cole Walker and his two young daughters has made her open up a bit. She's even gotten comfortable enough to welcome her brother Willie back into her life after many years of separation, and she looks forward to meeting up with him in the coming weeks. After Cole and his family discover evidence of a body on Redstone Ridge, Mattie's expertise--and that of her canine partner, Robo--gets her called in for a search. But the body is just the beginning of a series of crimes up on the ridge, and Mattie and her colleagues are horrified by the brutality of the perpetrator. Worse still is an unusual phone call Mattie receives from Tamara, her brother's girlfriend. Willie's gone missing, and Mattie can only hope that his disappearance is a relapse rather than something darker rooted in their shared history. Mizushima boldly emphasizes her heroine's history, connecting Mattie's past with her current case and forcing Mattie to take a leap and share her story with colleagues and friends in order to catch the killer.The development of an extensive backstory over a multibook arch (Hunting Hour, 2017, etc.) pays off when a police officer long known for keeping things to herself begins to confront her past and connect with those in her present.

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September 1, 2018
In the fourth Timber Creek K-9 mystery, officer Mattie Cobb and her canine sidekick, the endearing Robo, team up with veterinarian Cole Walker to stop a serial killer. Mattie and Cole have been unofficial partners since the first book in the series, Killing Trail? (2015), and by now they're comfortable with each other, comfortable enough to be exploring, gently, the idea of romance. But that might have to take a back seat for now; it turns out that one of the bodies found on a Colorado mountain ridge is that of Mattie's estranged brother. The writing is strong, the mystery is well developed, and this book, in particular, takes us deep into Mattie's personal life, opening up new doors into her past. Although the the series is linked by its continuing characters, each installment can be read as a stand-alone. Fans of Alex Kava's Ryder Creed series should find the Cobb series very much to their liking.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)