3 Stars
Detective Michael Gideon and Sirius, his K-9 partner, are back again to tackle the strangest cases that the LAPD has to offer. But this time, the case is a little different. The case finds them. One evening Sirius saves a dog from pack of coyotes. They try to return the dog to her owner, Heather Moreland, only to find that she is missing. The circumstances around her disappearance seem suspicious at best and the more that Gideon digs, the more convinced he is that Heather has been abducted.
As Gideon tries to help locate Heather, he’s also troubled by the death of Detective Langston Walker, the leader of a support group for families of murder victims. When they last met, Walker told Gideon about a cold case he had reopened, making Gideon wonder if Walker’s death was truly the accident everyone believes it to be. Gideon has his suspicions right off the bat and as he continues to look through Walker’s cases and his life, the more he’s convinced that Detective Walker was murdered because of something he uncovered.
This is the third book in the Gideon and Sirius series, and once again, I would recommend reading the previous two entries before taking on Lost Dog. There’s not a huge amount of backstory in this book as compared to the previous two, but it still helps.
The mystery of Heather’s disappearance plays out very well, even though the mystery isn’t very strong. You’ll figure it out pretty quickly, there are some very obvious clues that are left behind. The mystery surrounding Detective Walker’s death was a more interesting one and while it wasn’t entirely surprising, it was satisfying. There are times that I wish the book could have been longer so that equal attention could be paid to both cases. It’s hard at times to make the jump from one minute he’s still scratching his head and the next the case is solved. Even with his visions that he experiences after fire-walking, it’s still a pretty big stretch to get from point A to point B.
The secondary characters are still very washed out. I think at this point I’m actually disappointed in Gideon’s girlfriend. I know that she has the patience of a saint, but come on, at least make seem realistic. I still wish there was more interaction between Gideon and Sirius. With his humor and biting wit, I think Sirius would make an excellent straight man..er..dog!
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