Before It’s Too Late by Sara Driscoll – Review.

About the Book

In this powerful K-9 crime thriller, FBI Special Agent Meg Jennings and her trusted search-and-rescue Labrador, Hawk, must race against the clock before a diabolical killer strikes again . . .
Somewhere in the Washington, D.C., area, a woman lies helpless in a box. Beneath the earth. Barely breathing. Buried alive. In Quantico, the FBI receives a coded message from the woman’s abductor. He wants to play a game with them: decipher the clues, find the grave, save the girl. The FBI’s top cryptanalysts crack the code and Special Agent Meg Jennings and her K-9 partner, Hawk, scramble to the scene of the crime. Cryptic clues lead them astray and by the time they solve the puzzle, it’s too late. But the killer’s game is far from over . . .
Soon another message arrives. Another victim is taken, and the deadly pattern is repeated–again and again. Each kidnapping triggers another desperate race against time, each with the possibility of another senseless death. That’s when Meg decides to try something drastic. Break the Bureau’s protocol. Bring in her brilliant sister, Cara, a genius at word games, to decipher the kidnapper’s twisted clues. Meg knows she’s risking her career to do it, but she’s determined not to let one more person die under her and Hawk’s watch. If the plan fails, it could bite them in the end. And if it leads to the killer, it could bury them forever . . .

My Review

WIth thanks to the publisher for the copy received.

Before It’s Too Late is the second book in the series that features Meg and her canine partner Hawk. I have enjoyed both books, both involve serious crime but are from a completely different viewpoint. That of dog handler and dog.
In this book the crime is personal to Meg. Women are being abducted and left in dangerous situations. Meg and the rest of the team receive coded messages that will determine the location of the women who if they are not found in time will die. All of the women look like Meg and all the codes have a connection to her.

I have to say that the deciphering of the codes went way over my head and my knowledge of the American Civil War starts and ends with the novel and TV series North and South. But neither of these failings on my part stopped me loving this novel. All off the characters’ personalities were real including them of the numerous dogs. The Rescue dog, Blink, I just wanted to hug. I felt that all of the animals that featured were based on actual animals that the authors had. The human characters were just as good. Seeing the relationship between Meg, Cara, the firefighter and the journalist was nice to read. It isn’t often where the journalist in a novel is likeable and a hero.

Hopefully this will be a long running series. Murder, abduction and violence yes but there is also the contact with human and canine which makes it special. Fantastic and humbling.