On a routine welfare check, Deputy Mattie Walker discovers a young woman dead under what appears to be unnatural circumstances, the woman's child crying hysterically in another room.

Mattie aches with sympathy as she tends to the child, a 3-year-old called Emma, and awaits backup. Tension mounts when Emma tells her, "Auntie Beebee hit Mommy." Did Emma witness her mother's murder? Mattie is a K9 officer and later, during a sweep of the quarters, Robo, her dog, indicates a hit on a drug pipe in the room where the body was found, but no other signs of drugs or other suspicious items.

Earlier that morning, Mattie had berated herself for neglecting family duties as wife of Cole, her veterinarian husband, and stepmother to his daughters, Angie and Sophie. These concerns were agitated by her heartbreak over little Emma. After leaving the crime scene, she decides to run home to see the kids before they go to school. En route, she halts a speeding car, and Robo makes a hit on drugs concealed in the vehicle's trunk. The driver has identified a teenage passenger in the car as his nephew, but the boy's response to questions arouses Mattie's suspicion.

As Mattie and her team investigate what seem to be separate crimes, Cole Walker notices suspicious activities during vet calls at area dog kennels. It soon becomes apparent that everything is connected, and an organized crime ring has brought multiple sources of trouble to their rural Colorado community.

Tensions mount with both the difficulties of the case and family issues. It's difficult to sustain interest in an ongoing theme in a mystery series, and this is the eleventh episode in this one. But author Margaret Mizushima does an excellent job in maintaining reader interest in Mattie and Cole's relationship, including the new desire for a child of their own, which was partly inspired by the plight of little Emma.

One of the pleasures of reading a series is getting to know and care about the characters and their goals. Mizushima has skillfully built on maintaining reader interest.

[ visit Margaret Mizushima online ]