Love the Dog, but the Novel's Pretty Much Meh

Lone Wolf - Sara Driscoll

There are a lot of pet mysteries on the market, ranging from the childish – Spencer Quinn’s dog Chet talks, though like a hyperactive toddler with ADD – to more adult fare like Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy series, in which dogs and cats (among other animals) speak like guests at the Algonquin Round Table. A few mysteries have dogs who act like dogs: Robert Crais writes one that features rescued bomb-sniffer Maggie. To the more noble vein of the latter, you can add Sara Driscoll’s new FBI K-9 series featuring Hawk and his handler Meg, beginning with Lone Wolf.

Well, you could add it to Crais’s Suspect, but then you’d have to lower your standards by a couple of steps. You see, that’s because Crais knows how to write a mystery while Driscoll (in reality, the writing team of Jen J. Danna and Ann Vanderlaan) doesn’t. Oh, sure, she knows a lot about dogs and the training of dogs, so those aspects of the novel ring true. On the other hand, her grasp of police procedurals appears to be even less than that of an occasional viewer of “Law and Order,” which is a serious shortcoming for someone writing a police procedural. But about the book…

A disaffected dude is blowing up government buildings. At first, of course, the characters naturally assume it’s Muslim jihadis, but we know better because we’re watching as the villain builds his bombs and the drones he uses to deliver them. FBI K-9 agent Meg Jennings and her rescue dog Hawk work the first two scenes and, as major characters in mystery novels are wont to do, decide to start their own investigation. Never mind that the entire FBI, not to mention law-enforcement teams from across the country, are already going through the evidence with a fine-toothed comb; Meg decides she’s smarter than everyone else – and by gum, she apparently is. There is, of course, the stereotypical climax with woman and dog mano á mano with the crazy bomber – which comes, as one might expect, to a satisfying conclusion. There are also a few political statements of the Jade Helm variety, but for the most part the novel is just standard tropes. And that, frankly, is most of what’s wrong with it: you have an interesting premise, that of a K-9 team on the hunt for a domestic terrorist, that’s wasted on stereotypical bushwa.

For instance: Meg is the only person who’s smart enough to figure out that C-4 used in the bombs, whose taggants indicate it’s of military origin, was stolen a few months ago from an Army reserve facility in West Virginia (would the Reserve even have C-4?). She's also certain she can get the inside skinny faster than the brass... yeah, sure: the usual loner plot.

Or: The Army CID couldn’t find the thief at the time the C-4 was stolen so they quit looking, but Meg and her buddies easily track the guy down months later.

Plus: Ancillary characters like a reporter, a fireman and Meg’s former sergeant are all straight from Central Casting, not to mention that they’re “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

When all is said and done, Lone Wolf is only worth about two stars out of five. The plot is stupid, the authors’ need to make their heroine nearly omniscient and omnipotent is almost overpowering, and the villain is far too simple-minded to have single-handedly stolen the explosives, built the delivery vehicles, and put his plot in motion – not to mention that he’s crazy. Perhaps the writing team needs to think more in terms of teamwork for their investigators and less in terms of superheroes. Unless they want to write for Marvel, I guess…

Mentioned in the text: 

Thereby Hangs a Tail (Spencer Quinn)
Suspect (Robert Crais)
Tail of the Tip-Off (Rita Mae Brown)

Book 2 of the series:

Before It's Too Late

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