Today I'm reviewing Vanishing Hour by my all time favorite romantic suspense author, Laura Griffin. It was FAB!!!
Enjoy!
ISBN-13: 978-0593546697
Publisher: Berkley
Release Date: 10-25-2022
Length: 336 pp
Source: Author for review
Buy It: Amazon/ B&N/ IndieBound
ADD TO: GOODREADS
Overview:
When a cold case in Texas leads to a sinister string of disappearances, a newcomer to the small town helps a detective piece together the clues in this new romantic thriller from New York Times bestselling author Laura Griffin.Corporate lawyer Ava Burch has had enough of the big city and the daily grind. She grew up with her father, who raised search-and-rescue dogs, in rural Texas and has moved to the small town of Cuervo to spend time in the dry, rugged wilderness near Big Bend National Park. When she and her dog, Huck, discover an abandoned campsite on a volunteer search-and-rescue mission, she’s perplexed, but she carefully photographs it all the same.
All Grant Wycoff can see when he looks at Ava is a city slicker—with her designer jeans and shiny car—who has no business on a serious team made of seasoned outdoorsmen and retired cops. But when she tells him of her findings on the trail, he sees there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Ava’s discovery reminds Grant of the unsolved case of a young woman who went missing two years ago. As they look into the campsite further, another woman disappears under odd circumstances. With time running out, Ava and Grant must work against the brutal heat from both the Texas sun and their own electric chemistry to solve the case.
Read an excerpt:
Chapter One
Ava followed the curve of the dirt road to the string of
emergency vehicles. She checked her watch and cursed. She was later than she’d
thought.
“Not good, Huck.”
The black Lab nudged her arm with his wet nose.
“We’re going to have to redeem ourselves.”
Ava passed a sheriff’s SUV and squeezed her little red car
between a pair of dusty pickups from the parks department. Huck whimpered with
impatience as she grabbed his lead off the seat and clipped it to his collar.
“Okay, let’s do this.”
Ava slid out. Huck hopped over the console and followed her.
She felt dozens of eyes on her as she popped open the back hatch and retrieved
her day pack. Hitching it onto her shoulder, Ava scanned the faces. None were
familiar. All were skeptical. Several of the men wore the Henley County
Sheriff’s Office backcountry uniform of HCSO ballcap, navy T-shirt, and
desert-brown tactical pants.
Ava spied some park rangers in olive green milling near a
blue tarp that looked like operation headquarters. Beneath the makeshift tent,
two rangers studied a map that had been spread out across a pair of tables.
“Help you?”
She turned around as a man sauntered over. Tall, fiftyish,
paunchy. He wore a sheriff’s office cap and sweat-soaked golf shirt. He stopped
in front of her.
Ava smiled. “Are you the incident commander?”
“I’m Sheriff Donovan.”
“Oh.” Crap. She thrust out her hand. “Ava Burch, WestTex S
and R.”
He shook her hand and frowned down at Huck.
“We’re here to help with the search,” she added.
“They started five hours ago.”
“Yes, I know. I was unavoidably delayed.” She sensed a
brush-off coming, and she glanced around. “Do you know who the IC is on this
one?”
“That’d be Mel Tyndall,” he said, nodding in the direction
of the blue tent.
“Oh, good. I’ll check in with him.”
She led Huck away before the sheriff could think of any
objections. She zeroed in on the park ranger who seemed to be giving orders—a
wiry man with wraparound sunglasses perched atop his shaved head. Ava stepped
under the tarp, and he glanced up.
“I’m Ava with WestTex Search and Rescue. Chuck Crawford said
you could use a hand today?”
Dropping the name of the chief ranger in nearby Big Bend
seemed to do the trick. Tyndall stepped away from the table and looked her
over.
“Are you trained up?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He glanced at Huck, who wore his work vest. “Him too?”
“Yep. He’s logged more than a hundred wilderness searches.”
She didn’t mention that most of those had been with a
different handler. But Tyndall seemed too distracted to nitpick her
credentials. He checked his sports watch and returned his attention to the
table.
“The first teams deployed at oh nine hundred,” he said.
“We’re just getting started on sector D.”
Ava stepped closer to examine the map. It was a detailed
topo of Silver Canyon State Park. A small red sticker near a campground marked
what had to be the PLS, or point last seen. Sections bounded by natural
barriers had been marked with letters.
“We just sent a team out to Lizard Creek Trail,” Tyndall
said, tapping the map.
Ava stomach knotted as she studied the spot. Sector D was well outside of the high-probability
search area. They were getting desperate.
“You up for it?” Tyndall asked.
“Absolutely.”
He handed her a clipboard. “Sign in, and I’ll brief you on
the way over.”
Ava quickly jotted her info on a card and followed the
ranger to one of the dusty white pickups. She stowed her pack on the floor and
hopped into the passenger seat, signaling Huck to sit on her lap.
Tyndall wasted no time pulling out and maneuvering onto the
pitted dirt road that Ava had just navigated. Huck pressed his head against the
glass, squirming with excitement as they passed all the police vehicles.
Tyndall slid on his shades and glanced over. “You’re new to
the county?”
“Been here since October,” she told him.
“Done any ops yet?”
“Three this spring in Big Bend.”
They bumped along the narrow dirt road and hung a right onto
an even narrower one. Ava visualized the state park in her head. She was
familiar with it, but only from a few casual day hikes. She’d never been on a
search team here.
“Silver Canyon is different,” Tyndall said. “This is rugged
country.”
She turned to look at him. Big Bend wasn’t exactly a golf
resort. The sprawling national park consisted of more than 800,000 untamed
acres. But Ava understood what he was getting at. Silver Canyon was a new
addition to state park system, and it lacked even basic amenities.
“We’ve only got one paved road,” the ranger continued. “It
goes around the perimeter. The interior roads are dirt, and they tend to wash
out when we get a flash flood. The only cell service is near the entrance, so
everything’s by radio.”
“Okay.”
“Did Chuck tell you about the op?”
“Just that it’s a child missing.”
Tyndall nodded. “A boy, three and a half.”
Ava’s heart sank.
“Noah Dumfries. He’s been missing since oh eight hundred.
Wandered off from his family’s camp site after breakfast. His mom thinks he
went down to the creek to brush his teeth.”
“Have they—”
“We had a canine team there all morning. No sign of him.”
Ava looked out the window at the limestone canyon baking in
the midday sun.
“He’s just over three feet tall, blond hair, brown eyes.
He’s wearing a red Spider-Man T-shirt with blue shorts with white sneakers.”
She glanced at him. “What about the parents?”
“Mom is distraught, as you’d expect. She’s at the campsite
with her other son, who’s five, in case Noah comes back. Dad is at the ranger
station. He wanted to join the search, but we convinced him to stay back.”
It was standard procedure. When a child went missing there
was always the depressing possibility that the parents could have something to
do with it.
“Do they have any pets?” she asked.
“No idea. Why?”
“I want to understand if he’s afraid of dogs.”
“I don’t know. I can find out, though.”
He swung off the dirt road onto what looked to be a horse
trail. He bumped across the feathergrass and headed for the base of a tall
cliff. A wooden sign came into view.
Tyndall skidded to a halt.
“Lizard Creek Trail,” he said. “The other team deployed to
the east about—” He checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes ago.”
“Do they have a dog with them?”
“No. It’s two of our seasonal rangers.”
Ava’s heart sank again as she looked out the window.
“Seasonal” was code for summer interns. And she knew what Tyndall was doing
here. Inexperienced volunteers were being banished to the low-probability areas
while law enforcement veterans conducted the real search. Ava got it—Tyndall
didn’t know her from anyone. And he didn’t know Huck. All he knew was that
she’d shown up five hours late and he’d never worked with her before. But with
the clock ticking and only one other dog in the search party, it was a waste to
give her a crap assignment. Especially with a missing child case. Under normal
circumstances, a lost kid would have pulled in resources from all the
neighboring counties. But a helicopter crash in Big Bend this morning had
gotten a jump on everyone’s attention, and the National Park Service had no one
to spare right now.
Tyndall reached into the back of his truck cab and grabbed a
radio. “How much water you have there?” He nodded at her pack.
“A gallon.”
“That for both of you?”
“Yeah.”
“Better take more.” He grabbed a bottle of water from the
back and handed it to her.
“Thanks.” Huck squirmed on her lap, anxious to get started.
He’d been trembling with excitement since she put on his vest.
“You and your dog are Team Six,” he said. “Check in every
half hour, no exceptions.”
“Okay.”
“And it’s hot out there. Don’t forget to drink.”
“Got it.” She pushed open the door.
“You’re headed west,” he continued. “Cover as much ground as
you can and meet back here in four hours.” He checked his watch. “We’ll have
someone here to pick you up.”
“Got it.”
“If you see anything at all, call it in. Time is of the
essence.”
“I know.”
He looked Huck over with a frown, and she knew what he was
thinking. With his thick black fur, he was going to melt in this heat. But Huck
was tougher than he looked. They both were.
“How old is he?” Tyndall asked.
“Four.”
“And the medal on him?” He nodded at the silver medallion on
his collar.
“Saint Anthony, patron saint of the lost.” She gave a
self-conscious shrug. “It brings him luck.”
“Luck, huh?” Tyndall squinted through the windshield at the
sunbaked cliff. “Well, we’re going on hour six here, so we need it.”
My Review:
Laura Griffin’s latest, Vanishing Hour, has
everything romantic suspense and thriller fans love, a chilling intense story,
an edge of your seat whodunit and off the charts chemistry between her stars
Ava and Grant. As usual this Texas native takes fans to a Texas locale and
spins one heck of tale, this time the town is fictional but the surrounding
state and national parks are real giving the read substance and credibility,
plus as an added bonus readers get up close and personal with search and rescue
dogs and handlers. The characters are all incredible and the stars are amazing,
Ava is likable and relatable where Grant is more an enigma so yin and yang but
they work well together as a couple and as role players in the story. The
mystery is solid, the research is thorough, the clues and suspects are many
with a red herring here and there for good measure and even the most perceptive
reader will have a hard time solving this puzzle until Laura’s big OMG reveal
near the end. Fans of thrillers, romantic suspense, strong women protagonists
and of this awesome author’s work will stay up all night to finish this best
seller bound novel.
Tired of Houston and her big city law firm and needing a new
direction for her life Ava Burch moved to the small West Texas town of Cuervo
along with her search and rescue dog Huck. She’ll be partnering in a small two
lawyer firm and offering her and Huck’s services for search and rescue
operations in several nearby state and national parks when needed.
While on a search for a missing child Ava comes upon what
seems like an abandoned campsite and takes photos for evidence. When Detective
Grant Wycoff sees the pics he thinks this could be connected to the cold case
of a missing hiker. Ava offers more help but Grant warns her off which just
makes her more determined to get involved.
The last thing Grant needs is some big city slicker with her
fancy red car to stick her nose in police business. He’s more than capable of
handling this himself but the beautiful brazen attorney has other ideas and
he’ll probably have to arrest her to keep her out of this case. Then he thinks
maybe she and her dog could come in handy and maybe keeping her close will also
keep her out of trouble.
As they search for clues they’ll be dealing with the
sizzling Texas heat and a sizzling attraction to each other and danger under
every rock turned over.
I am glad you enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI did
DeleteEvery time I see you review her I think I should read her. I really like the sound of this one and am going to put it on my TBR.
ReplyDeleteI think you will like her Kathryn
DeleteYay, I've got this one and this will be my first shot at her books.
ReplyDeleteOh Sophia Rose you will NOT be sorry :) I promise
DeleteI definitely need to read more of this author's work. I have one of her more recent books (I think that I won it from you, actually) that I hope to read sometime soon.
ReplyDeletefingers crossed you get to it Carole, If you love romantic suspense you will love her
DeleteIt was one of her best, I mean it kept me on my toes the whole way
ReplyDeleteI like that cover,so cool
ReplyDeleteit is
Delete;-)
ReplyDelete