Critical Pursuit by Janice Cantore

Read an excerpt here.

Officer Brinna Caruso has built a reputation at the precinct as the cop to call when a child goes missing. For Brinna, it’s personal because she was once one of them. Brinna and her K-9 search and rescue dog, Hero, will stop at nothing to find a missing child, no matter the stakes.

Detective Jack O’Reilly isn’t ready to return to his homicide duties, after losing his wife to a drunk driver. He’s on the downside of his career, and bent on revenge, when he’s assigned as Brinna’s partner. While on patrol, Jack struggles between his quest for personal justice and his responsibility to those around him, especially his partner.

Skeptical of Jack’s motives, Brinna isn’t sure she can rely on her new partner, whose reckless abandon endangers the safety of those around him. But when a man surfaces with an MO similar to the criminal who abducted Brinna twenty years earlier, Brinna and Jack must cast aside previous judgments and combine efforts to catch the kidnapper, and finally allow Brinna the peace stolen from her as a child.

Critical Pursuit by Janice Cantore was an exciting novel that explored the reality of child kidnappings and what goes on during typical police rounds. The plot was well developed and kept me interested throughout the entire story. It contained a good mix of mystery, suspense, and emotion. The themes that this novel explored were convicting and clear, and they included the importance of family, forgiveness, trusting and having faith in God even when evil and suffering occurs. The narration of the story was third person, but it still alternated from between Jack and Brinna's point of view so that the reader was able to glimpse what both main characters were thinking and feeling.

The characters of Critical Pursuit were well developed and realistic. Both Jack and Brinna had distinct strengths, but they also had their own flaws and issues that they had to work through as the novel progressed. I liked both characters. Jack started out very depressed and angry with God and people, but as he worked through his feelings and learned to forgive, his whole life began to improve. Brinna had always run away from God and been bitter toward her alcoholic father, but as she experienced heartache and changes in her life and in her family, her perspectives about both began to change.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel, and I look forward to reading more of Janice Cantore's novels as well as hopefully future novels about Detective Brinna Caruso.

I received this novel for free from Tyndale House Press in exchange for an honest review.