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A review by donnek
Before It's Too Late by Sara Driscoll
4.0
It’s nice to catch up with Meg and her K9 partner, Hawk, and the rest of the FBI K9 team in this second installment. I love stories about K9 SAR teams; they always exhibit the truly magnificent strengths and abilities of amazing working dogs and their handlers. I also like Meg, who is a pretty bad@$$ FBI K9 handler as well as her sister, Cara, who owns and runs a K9 training center. Meg and Cara live together and between the two of them they have three doggies, Hawk (Lab), Saki (Pitbull) and Blink (Greyhound). This makes them good people in my book as well as their parents who own and run an animal rescue sanctuary.
The book summary introduces the primary storyline of the killer using codes that the FBI have to crack first in order to know where the killer has hidden his victims. What the book summary doesn’t really say is that the killer is leaving messages on the victims dog (none of the victims dogs are killed or harmed) and all the messages are addressed to Meg. Then there’s the fact that all of the victims look like Meg too. Meg shares the case and messages with Cara who actually cracks the codes before the FBI code breakers and discovers that the keys to the codes are also linked to Meg too. This has Meg on high alert because Cara also looks a lot like Meg too.
Most of the story revolves around cracking the killer’s codes and trying to rescue the victims before they die. Eventually, the FBI finds out that Meg has shared the case with outsiders and Meg is suspended for disobeying an order as well as FBI protocol. Throughout the story, the killer becomes more unhinged and more personal with Meg. The final abductions have the killer sending the message directly to just to Meg because the killer assumes that FBI is the one that is figuring out the codes really fast. Meg heads out without FBI support to save the victims. It’s a scary and absolutely frightening scene.
The continued character development of Meg and to some degree Cara and her fellow K9 teammates were well done. Some I’ve come to like more and others, I now don’t like or trust. The pacing was fast and action packed with the Meg and the team racing from one scene to another. The writing was also well done. I like how Driscoll started each chapter with some tidbit or trivia about some element of the civil war. The killer was using civil war heroes and locations in the messages. In the last installment, Driscoll used SAR training vocabulary and training in the chapter introductions. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Angela Dawe, was great at creating intensity at all the right parts. I’m looking at an overall rating of 4.1 that I will be rounding down to a 4star review.
The book summary introduces the primary storyline of the killer using codes that the FBI have to crack first in order to know where the killer has hidden his victims. What the book summary doesn’t really say is that the killer is leaving messages on the victims dog (none of the victims dogs are killed or harmed) and all the messages are addressed to Meg. Then there’s the fact that all of the victims look like Meg too. Meg shares the case and messages with Cara who actually cracks the codes before the FBI code breakers and discovers that the keys to the codes are also linked to Meg too. This has Meg on high alert because Cara also looks a lot like Meg too.
Most of the story revolves around cracking the killer’s codes and trying to rescue the victims before they die. Eventually, the FBI finds out that Meg has shared the case with outsiders and Meg is suspended for disobeying an order as well as FBI protocol. Throughout the story, the killer becomes more unhinged and more personal with Meg. The final abductions have the killer sending the message directly to just to Meg because the killer assumes that FBI is the one that is figuring out the codes really fast. Meg heads out without FBI support to save the victims. It’s a scary and absolutely frightening scene.
The continued character development of Meg and to some degree Cara and her fellow K9 teammates were well done. Some I’ve come to like more and others, I now don’t like or trust. The pacing was fast and action packed with the Meg and the team racing from one scene to another. The writing was also well done. I like how Driscoll started each chapter with some tidbit or trivia about some element of the civil war. The killer was using civil war heroes and locations in the messages. In the last installment, Driscoll used SAR training vocabulary and training in the chapter introductions. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Angela Dawe, was great at creating intensity at all the right parts. I’m looking at an overall rating of 4.1 that I will be rounding down to a 4star review.