The best crime solvers and their dogs books

FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is on the hunt for a serial killer who strikes at truck stops and rest areas. Ryder Creed, an injured vet suffering from PTSD, has returned home from Afghanistan without his bomb detection dog, and opened a company specializing in training rescues to become air scent dogs. Law enforcement laughs when Creed appears on the scene to aid O’Dell, accompanied by Grace, a Jack Russell terrier. The laughter ends when Grace locates bodies above and below ground as well as underwater.

As Creed and O’Dell work the case, Kava weaves in information about the differences in dogs tracking missing persons, finding cadavers, and sniffing out drugs, explosive devices, and even certain health conditions. This book launched her Creed series and is tightly written, suspenseful, and educational. Grace, Creed, and Maggie are exceptional characters and a joy to read. So good!

I have been hooked on Kate Shugak from this first book, and Stabenow has just completed #23 in the series. Kate is a no-nonsense Alaskan native who lives a simple life on her homestead in a one-room cabin on the part of the 20 million square acres of national park near the Quilak Mountain range. She’s an ex-investigator for the DA’s office who occasionally takes on complex murder cases for law enforcement agencies. Accompanied by her yellow-eyed, 140-pound husky/wolf mix, Mutt, Shugak manages to terrify most people, including criminals, with her knowledge of human nature and kick-ass attitude. Mutt is there to serve and protect Kate.

Stabenow makes Kate’s world come alive, threading the history of her Niniltna tribe and Aleut legacy throughout each book, and managing to engage and educate me with every single story.

This book opens with Maggie, a German shepherd's point of view, while on patrol in Afghanistan. She is an explosives detection dog (EDD) who watches her alpha die in an attack and is herself strafed multiple times by sniper fire. Returned to the USA, she ultimately ends up in the LAPD K-9 program for possible law enforcement retraining. Scott James, an LAPD patrol officer, suffers from PTSD after he’s shot numerous times and his partner killed. James wanted SWAT but is offered K-9 and chooses Maggie, instead of the dog assigned to him.

Throughout the book, Crais gives us Maggie’s point of view as she and Scott work together to heal their various scars and solve the complicated crime which killed James’ partner. No one holds much hope for either of these two, but man and dog battle PTSD and learn from each other.

Robert Crais is known for his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike PI series. This book was a standalone until he revisited Maggie and Scott in the 2015 book, The Promise. Well-written, touching, and great mysteries.

Mercy Carr, former military police, inherits her fiance’s sniffer dog, when Martinez is killed in action. Elvis is a Malinois suffering from canine PTSD while Mercy’s reeling from a broken heart. She and Elvis take long walks in the Vermont mountains and one day the dog alerts them to explosives. At the same time, the twosome finds a crying baby alone in the woods and a shallow grave with human bones.

They are joined by Game Warden Troy and his 100-pound Newfoundland, Susie Bear. Mercy and Elvis put themselves in physical danger as both lack boundaries in their grief. Troy and Susie provide backup, and work alongside to solve the mysteries. Munier paints a picture of life in the backwoods complete with homegrown militia and a terrorist attack scheduled for July 4. Interesting characters in a new series with well-written parallel stories. #4 has just been published.

Billy, an injured Iraq war vet, returns home and finds no real place for him at his former job. Milo, a German shepherd trained by the same police department, has aged out at seven years and is also unwanted. Since Milo and Billy previously worked together, they team up, and with Rosenfelt’s tongue-in-cheek humor, commit robberies to survive. Why not use the dog’s training to grab items from criminal hands and remove them? But on the fourth outing, things don’t go as planned.

Milo takes off and buries an envelope he took from the perp, Billy is framed for murder, and attorney Andy Carpenter, who loves dogs, agrees to represent the dog, jailed for his own safety. Carpenter’s snarky sense of humor leaps off every page as he twists and turns the justice system for yet another dog-related cause. Rosenfelt has rescued thousands of dogs through his Tara Foundation and has written both an Andy Carpenter and a new K Team series. These books are perfect for those who like dogs and enjoy New York-style humor.