From Publishers Weekly
The episodic sequel to Death in Bloodhound Red finds Georgia dog trainer Jo Beth Sidden coping with an enlarged staff and an upcoming week-long training seminar. Before the seminar begins, the sheriff asks her to check out a deputy he suspects of growing and selling marijuana. He also tells her about a local kidnapping that's pulled in the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Jo Beth hears that her abusive ex-husband, Bubba, who has vowed to harm her, has been paroled. While trying to keep herself and her students safe from him, she helps a friend's fiance retrieve buried money and gets a boyfriend of her own. An old friend, the security guard of the kidnapped man's firm, involves her in that case, too. While juggling responsibilities both large and small, Jo Beth recounts past triumphs of her 87 dogs and thoroughly describes the raising and training of bloodhounds. The fragmented story line here lacks the focused punch of the Lanier's debut, but Jo Beth's brash ingenuity and a wry sense of humor are intact. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
As if turning 30 isn't traumatic enough, feisty Jo Beth Sidden of Basla City, Georgia, has invested the $70,000 she inherited from her father into the business of putting 57 bloodhounds through six months of rigorous training. Six of those well-prepared hounds will go to work for law-enforcement masters. Meanwhile, Jo Beth has enough on her plate for a veritable smorgasbord during the nine eventful days of this serial-like novel. First and worst, her brutal wife-beating ex-husband Bubba has been released from prison. She was in the hospital for six months after his last rampage, which is why Jo Beth has security gates around her compound. Next, she helps her friend Sheri find a buried treasure of $100,000, left by Sheri's would-be father-in-law. And in between the pieces of Jo Beth's tell-all first-person narration there's the story of a man who's been kidnapped by his three sons and stuffed into a large container. You can figure that Jo Beth and her very talented if blind hound Bobby Lee will sniff out that man. She'll also rescue Mary Ann, a young woman who's been kidnapped by religious nutcase Preston Little; persuade a deputy not to grow and sell marijuana; and meet up with Chief Jonathan Webber of the Eppley Police Department, who takes a real shine to Jo Beth--and vice versa. A meandering, episodic second from Lanier (Death in Bloodhound Red, not reviewed), with an amiable Brett Butlerlike narrator and a cliffhanger of an ending. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Lanier does for bloodhounds what Dick Francis does for racehorses in her atmospheric, and critically applauded, novels set in rural Georgia.Jo Beth Sidden is a fiercely independent woman who raises and trains bloodhounds for search-and-rescue missions and to track down escaped prisoners in South Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp. Jo Beth's got her hands full when the local police chief hires her to sniff out a local marijuana grower and a friend asks her to locate a kidnapped man -- even though the FBI is on the case. And when her sociopath of an ex-husband Bubba gets out of prison and begins stalking her, Jo Beth will need to use all her skills --and her bloodhounds --to outwit Bubba, to help the police and to best the FBI."Lanier's writing blends white-hot intensity with a lyrical sense of place that can render even a sticky humid Okefenokee Swamp as a setting I can't wait to visit again."-Margaret Maron, bestselling author and winner of the Edgar, Agatha and Anthony Awards


About the Author
Virginia Lanier lives with her husband, Hoss, on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp in Echols County, Georgia.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Somewhere deep beneath the earth in the woods of Southeast Georgia, a man is buried. Alive. With food and water, and the terrible knowledge of who it was that did this to him. Praying for rescue but accepting death, he waits... Jo Beth Sidden is preparing for the first seminar at the facility where she breeds bloodhounds and teaches them to track. Nervous over the expansion of her business, she begins to regret the resolutions she made for her thirtieth birthday. Giving up smoking may be a good idea in theory, but with six law enforcement officers arriving shortly for a week-long course on using the bloodhounds Jo Beth has trained for them, a familiar vice would surely be soothing. Despite living through the morning from hell, Jo Beth won't let herself panic - until she learns that her ex-husband is out on parole. He has already attacked her twice, and Jo Beth knows it's just a matter of time before round three begins. And there's one more thing keeping her up nights - a high-profile kidnapping that was hushed up for so long that the trail might now be too cold, even for her expert hounds. Fearing the worst, but knowing she's the best, Jo Beth is drawn into the rescue attempt of her career. Her only hope lies with the best friend any woman could have: a droopy-eared, drooling, one-year-old, bind-from-birth bloodhound, the only creature on this earth smart enough to save her life and the day.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

As if turning 30 isn't traumatic enough, feisty Jo Beth Sidden of Basla City, Georgia, has invested the $70,000 she inherited from her father into the business of putting 57 bloodhounds through six months of rigorous training. Six of those well-prepared hounds will go to work for law-enforcement masters. Meanwhile, Jo Beth has enough on her plate for a veritable smorgasbord during the nine eventful days of this serial-like novel. First and worst, her brutal wife-beating ex-husband Bubba has been released from prison. She was in the hospital for six months after his last rampage, which is why Jo Beth has security gates around her compound. Next, she helps her friend Sheri find a buried treasure of $100,000, left by Sheri's would-be father-in-law. And in between the pieces of Jo Beth's tell-all first-person narration there's the story of a man who's been kidnapped by his three sons and stuffed into a large container. You can figure that Jo Beth and her very talented if blind hound Bobby Lee will sniff out that man. She'll also rescue Mary Ann, a young woman who's been kidnapped by religious nutcase Preston Little; persuade a deputy not to grow and sell marijuana; and meet up with Chief Jonathan Webber of the Eppley Police Department, who takes a real shine to Jo Beth—and vice versa.

A meandering, episodic second from Lanier (Death in Bloodhound Red, not reviewed), with an amiable Brett Butlerlike narrator and a cliffhanger of an ending.