I read this - and the next three of these several years ago. Great stories. This one turned up the other day, and I decided they were worth rereading. Since the paperback is thick and the paper is yellowing, I went looking for kindle versions. The fifth in the series is reasonably priced in kindle format, but none of the others are. So, I read it on paper - which slows me down significantly. There are only six books in the series; the first was published in 1995 - Lanier was 65. She decided to write a novel herself after following Dorothy Parker's advice about a book she was reading: "This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force." She figured she could do better - and she did. Unfortunately, she died in 2003, giving Jo Beth Sidden a short run in the annals of detective fiction. On the other hand, maybe there is yet hope for me.
Like Goldy Schultz in Diane Mott Davidson's series, Jo Beth got away from an abusive husband alive and is trying to make a life and protect herself at the same time. Unlike Goldy, she is breeding and training bloodhounds for search and rescue, drugs, arson investigations, and anything else that they are used for. The thought of twenty or thirty bloodhounds in one place is somewhat overwhelming - a smallish bloodhound would outweigh my 85- pound shepherd. That is a lot of dog chow - and end product ---
There are a lot of searches in the story, but the primary thread is Jo Beth herself. Her own background is a mystery which takes a lot of solving.
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