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Scent of Murder Cynthia G Alwyn Books

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Scent of Murder Cynthia G Alwyn Books

This book is so very good. I'm sure there are many more stories you could write and I'm hoping Brenna and Jett could move toward each other. And Joanne could be the jealous villain in the next book! I will be the first to read it when it comes out. Don't wait too long!


Tags : Amazon.com: Scent of Murder (9780312265595): Cynthia G. Alwyn: Books,Cynthia G. Alwyn,Scent of Murder,Minotaur Books,031226559X,1000225908,Mystery & Detective - General,Sacramento (Calif.);Fiction.,Search and rescue operations;Fiction.,Women volunteers in social service;Fiction.,American First Novelists,American Mystery & Suspense Fiction,Fiction,Fiction - Mystery Detective,Fiction Mystery & Detective General,Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths,MysterySuspense,Search and rescue operations,Women dog owners,Women volunteers in social service,Sacramento (Calif.),Women volunteers in social ser

Scent of Murder Cynthia G Alwyn Books Reviews

Cynthia Alwyn doesn't do too badly with her debut novel, but everything about it is obvious average to mediocre. The villain is too cartoonishly bad with almost silly taunting messages and "Oh, I am so clever of a serial killer, so I'll give you just enough infoformation to find out who I really am" e-mails. The heroine isn't really memorable either, and has an obligatory boyfriend that never appears in the novel, just so we don't have the heroine and the dogged lawman get together. Alwyn definately know her stuff though about dogs and search and rescue so at least that had an aura of reality.
In Seattle, Brenna Scott and her German Shepherd "Brie" are part of a team searching for missing four-year-old Zoe Hendricks. Brie, an expert scent discriminator, follows an olfactory path that leads her and Brenna to the abductor. However, the kidnapper tosses the child into the nearby rushing water. Brie jumps in after her, followed by Brenna. They rescue Zoe, but Brie dies. The kidnapper escapes, but later evidence points to the gambling problems of Zoe's father as the cause.

As Brenna mourns the loss of one of her "girls," an abduction in her home base of Sacramento occurs. With her other canine "Feather" and other members of the Culpepper Investigations search and rescue team, they find the child, but he is dead. Brenna somehow senses the kidnapper is the Seattle abductor who somehow followed them south. What she soon will learn is Gideon is playing a deadly game with her.

SCENT OF MURDER uses an interesting serial killer/kidnapping story line to focus on the partnership of human-canine search and rescue teams. That aspect is a two edged sword. By doing this, debut author Cynthia G. Alwyn provides an insightful fresh look into the mystery. At the same time, the depth of the teaming slows down the who-done-it. Still, with three-dimensional characters including the dogs and a strong main plot, many readers will fully relish this novel and want more stories starring Brenna, Feathers, and the other team members.

Harriet Klausner
Alwyn's first novel draws upon her extensive experience with canine search and rescue. Brenna Scott, with her dog, leads a volunteer team, called upon to search for missing people. In Seattle at a conference, she and her private-detective boss respond when a 4-year-old girl goes missing in the middle of the night. Brenna, breaking a number of her own rules, is alone when she surprises the kidnapper and he tosses the victim into a raging creek. Brenna saves the girl but loses her dog.
When another girl is kidnapped, a note is found addressed to Brenna, saying she has eight hours to find the child. But a tense, baffling, booby-trapped search ends in tragedy. The trickster killer, now fixated on Brenna, sends her coded, taunting email messages and stalks her, breaking into her house. Meanwhile the police, her boss and the FBI track down similar cases and hunt for a pattern. The climax, involving another kidnapped child and full-scale search, builds to a deadly struggle.
The killer is cleverly creepy and the mystery complex and well-paced but the true stars here are the working dogs. Alwyn, whose writing can be a little awkward, shines when she gets into the search, bringing humans and dogs to life, their work fascinating and suspenseful.
"Revenge is a dish best served cold."--Klingon proverb (Star Trek)
For nine years Cynthia G. Alwyn was a volunteer with a canine search-and-rescue team. One is not surprised, then, that her first novel, SCENT OF MURDER, is a story about a serial killer who is run aground by a team of specially trained canines.
Brenna Scott, a 39-year-old unmarried woman, owns two bitches Sabrina, whom she calls "Brie" and "Funny Face" (a black-and-tan German Shepherd), and Feather aka "Toots" (a black, shaggy-faced Bouvier des Flandres).
When four-year-old Zoe Hendricks of Seattle is reported missing, Brenna and her fellow volunteers search for the missing girl. Their efforts end in both success and failure Zoe is rescued, but Brie is killed.
The plot thickens when a sadistic psycho, a real wacko, becomes fixated on Brenna and begins to send her e-mails.. "Call me Gideon," he writes. "I AM the judge, the maimer, the destroyer." (Note carefully the "I AM.")
In this macabre "game" of hide-and-seek, Gideon's clues (written in codes and riddles), taunt and challenge Brenna (who is a jigsaw puzzle fan) to unravel his enigmatic messages, put the pieces together, and solve his puzzles in time to save the children. A "police procedural" sans police (the police and FBI are secondary players), this nail-biting yarn is constructed carefully by the author, who shows us, step by step, how the killer's identity is revealed.
An endearing feature of this novel is Alwyn's description of the special bond that develops between the dogs and their trainers/owners, and their grief when one of them is lost. The penultimate chapter of SCENT OF MURDER is a cliff-hanger that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat. An impressive and suspenseful debut novel.
Refreshing background and terrific characters, plus a great story! What more could you want? I hope she writes another-and soon!
As an avid mystery lover and dog lover, this book was truly a welcome find. The mystery stands very well on its own. The dog information is factual and fascinating. The characters are compelling and I look forward to meeting them again in future books. Alwyn should be proud of this book!
This book is so very good. I'm sure there are many more stories you could write and I'm hoping Brenna and Jett could move toward each other. And Joanne could be the jealous villain in the next book! I will be the first to read it when it comes out. Don't wait too long!