That others may live

Washington Post investigative reporter Clay McCord shows up at Meg Jennings's door before she even receives a call from her boss at the FBI Forensic Canine Unit. A 12-story building in downtown Washington, DC, has collapsed. Minutes later, Meg is called to the scene. She and her K-9 partner, Hawk, are tasked with searching for survivors. While Meg and Hawk spend long days searching, Meg's fiancé, Todd Webb is also searching as part of the DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services. When Todd crawls through a space to attend to a survivor, he finds a cell phone that he suspects might be part of a detonation device. While Meg, Hawk, and Todd are always in danger, it's McCord's research that leads to the suggestion that the building could have been a target of a conspiracy plot, which could include plans to destroy other locations. VERDICT Inspired by the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Florida, the seventh in Driscoll's series (following Under Pressure) is filled with technical details of buildings and explosives. Fans of Meg and Hawk will overlook the technicalities to read about the search-and-rescue teams.--Lesa Holstine

After the death of Ann Vanderlaan, Jen J. Danna, the surviving partner behind the Driscoll pseudonym, shoulders their dog-heavy franchise on her own in this ripped-from-the-headlines tale. In the week before Christmas, Meg Jennings, a civilian consultant to the FBI's Forensic Canine Unit, is shocked to hear from her brother-in-law, Washington Post investigative reporter Clay McCord, that Talbot Terraces, an upscale 12-story structure combining retail stores and condos only a few blocks from the White House, has partly collapsed. But she's not too shocked to spring into action with Hawk, her canine partner on the Human Scent Evidence Team. Along with other team members including D.C. firefighter/paramedic Todd Webb, her fiance, she and Hawk begin an agonizing search of the pancaked ruins for survivors. The descriptions of both the catastrophic destruction and the laborious, dangerous process of searching are so meticulous that readers will cheer every one of the few successful rescues. Why did the relatively new building collapse? It would seem impervious to natural disasters, and any sabotage would have had to be too carefully planned and extensive to justify a vengeful strike against one of its residents. No sooner has the rest of Talbot Terraces come down, however, than Todd gets word that the Brotherhood of Libertas may have attacked the building and may be eyeing other targets, motivated by a conspiracy theory as outlandish as it is lethal. The shift from a premise inspired by the 2021 collapse of Florida's Champlain Towers South to a search for possible saboteurs makes the story considerably less suspenseful, especially given its paper-thin characters, but gives its real heroes, those highly trained dogs, another chance to shine before Christmas dawns. Guaranteed to satisfy old fans of the franchise without necessarily building new ones. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.