Review by Booklist Review
To the cops on the scene, what happened was clear. Home invaders occupied the country home of a big-deal financier. They beat him up, kidnapped the man's wife and young daughter, and hauled away all the valuables they could carry. The police figure their job is to wait for a ransom demand. Enter Vira, a retriever who sizes up the scene and sets the cops on the trail of the real villains. Vira (pronounced VYE-ra) is a cadaver dog, the jewel in the gang of four-legged corpse-finders schooled in their trade by Chicago trainer Mace Reed. This is the duo's third appearance, after a couple of exceptional thrillers (The Finders, 2020, and The Keepers, 2021) in which Burton appears to be having such a good time that the reader can't resist the invitation to join him. As Vira knows, there's more to the story of this home invasion than there appears to be, and Burton displays a too-rare knack for keeping the heat on while moving a complex story to its finale, all the while injecting welcome jolts of humor.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Burton's enjoyable third Mace Reid K-9 mystery (after 2021's The Finders), cadaver dog trainer Mace is called to the estate of Kenneth and Calley Druckman on the west side of Lake Michigan, where criminals have apparently broken into their home and stolen jewelry worth a small fortune. In addition, Calley and their five-year-old daughter are missing, presumed kidnapped. Mace's golden retriever, Vira, is tasked with following footprints at the scene believed to belong to the robbers. But Vira keeps returning to the Druckman mansion, leading Mace to suspect that Kenneth may be involved in the crimes. When the battered body of Calley is found nearby, Kenneth's precarious house of cards begins to collapse. Mace, Vira, and Chicago police detective Kippy Gimm, Mace's sweetheart, race to find the truth before someone else is murdered. Once again, Vira displays her unerring ability to sniff out the guilty party and fearlessly defends her humans, though some series fans may grumble that Vira plays a less central role than usual. Even so, the sufficiently complicated plot will keep readers turning the pages. Dog lovers are in for a treat. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Burton's follow-up to The Keepers is an intricately plotted, fast-paced story. When Kenneth Druckman, CEO of a financial group, reports a home invasion and the kidnapping of his wife and five-year-old daughter, the FBI special agent in charge calls Mace Reid to bring in his pack of human remains-detection dogs. Soon Vira, Mace's golden retriever finds the body of Druckman's wife. Then Vira follows a trail that seems to implicate Druckman in the crime. In a complex investigation with twisted villains, Mace and Vira, along with Mace's girlfriend Officer Kippy Gimm, search for the missing girl. Money and jewels are involved, and it isn't long before several Russians and a secretive millionaire are on the lookout for the missing child too. VERDICT Tension is alleviated in Burton's suspenseful mystery by the dogs, who have well-developed characters, and by Mace's irreverent, wry humor. For fans of K--9 mysteries.--Lesa Holstine
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A faux kidnapping unleashes a cascade of all-too-real felonies for Chicago dog trainer Mason "Mace" Reid; his girlfriend, Detective Kippy Gimm; and his canine charges. Financier Kenneth J. Druckman's reputed to be one of the wealthiest residents of tony Glencoe. When Belgian investor Audrick Verlinden confronts him with evidence that he's been running a Ponzi scheme and demands recompense, however, Druckman faces ruin. Desperate, he stages the abduction of Eleanor, his 5-year-old daughter, so that he can explain his sudden losses by paying himself a stratospheric ransom. Things immediately go wrong, leaving Druckman's wife, former supermodel Calley Kurtz Druckman, bashed to death and Vira, Mace's golden retriever, making a beeline from the place where her body was dumped back to Druckman's house. That's as good as a signed confession for Mace and Kippy. But their certainty that Druckman killed his wife and arranged his daughter's kidnapping takes them only as far as the moneyman's own corpse, for he's soon executed by a recently imported Russian assassin. Now that their presumptive suspect is dead, Mace and Kippy can concentrate on the other people who are interested in getting possession of Eleanor Druckman--and that's an awful lot of people. Burton litters his opening movement with so many glimpses into the scheme's not particularly complicated backstory that the biggest mystery is what day of the week it is. Once he commits his tale to the present tense, things move along much more smartly until the mind-bogglingly gratuitous final outrage. Next time: fewer bad actors, fewer flashbacks, more dogs. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
