Book description
Something terrifying is happening to the dogs in the mountain community
of Mason County, Virginia. Pets are vanishing mysteriously and “Missing
Dog” posters cover the waiting room walls at Dr. Rachel Goddard's
veterinary clinic. A pack of feral canines roams at night, attacking
livestock in a desperate search for food. Now a prominent physician,
Gordon Hall, has been found dead in his yard, his throat torn open.
Sheriff's Department investigator Tom Bridger believes the killing was
premeditated murder, with a trained attack dog as the weapon. Are these
seemingly coincidental events related somehow? Tom thinks they are, and
he suspects they're connected to the resurgence of an old problem:
illegal dog-fighting. Dr. Hall's son insists that the feral dogs killed
his father, and he organizes a group of men to find and shoot the
animals. Rachel and her friend Holly Turner make enemies by trying to
rescue the dogs and move them to the sanctuary Holly has created. Tom,
in love with Rachel and worried about her safety, must divide his time
between the feral dog problem, the search for the dog-fighting
operation, and the hunt for Gordon Hall's killer. Does one of Hall's
five children-three adopted, all emotionally starved by their
parents-hold the key to his murder? Why is the youngest Hall child so
frightened that she begs Rachel, a stranger, for help? Tom and Rachel
face two killers, one human and one canine, and discover a more complex
web of lies and brutality than they ever imagined. Sandra Parshall
grew up in South Carolina and has worked as a reporter on newspapers in
South Carolina, West Virginia, and Baltimore. She lives in Northern
Virginia with her husband, a long-time Washington journalist, and three
cats.
