Great characters are what make great books, I figure. Especially if the characters have four legs, fur, and wolfish grins featuring nice, sharp, shiny canine teeth.
If a passion for dogged reading is the way your literary bent leans, too, then you’re in luck. Justine Davis has a new winning entry in her “Cutter’s Code” series, called Operation Takedown. It’s number 16 in this don’t-miss-it series, which has a human hero and heroine, of course, but the real central character is Cutter, a Belgian Tervuren.
I had never heard of this breed before. The American Kennel Club says Belgian Tervs are known for their smarts, sense of humor, and love of hard work. If that means these dogs love laughing with their humans while outsmarting them and getting the job done, that describes Cutter perfectly.
Don’t look now, but Cutter also takes great joy in being a matchmaker.
In the latest Cutter book, soldier Jordan Crockett watched in horror as the scion of a powerful family panicked, sprayed bullets at random, and killed Jordan’s best friend. The corrupt Lyden family is all too willing to kill again to protect the secret.
Looking after Eddie’s sister, Emily, becomes Jordan’s new mission, even though he has met her only through her brother’s loving words. Jordan writes to her with the real story of Eddie’s death and goes looking for her. In the meantime, Emily takes the story to Quinn and Hayley Foxworth, who, along with Cutter, can be counted on to deliver justice in their own special way.
Cutter also knows what else is important. From the very first, he makes sure the guy who should get together with the girl sits right close beside her in the car and on the sofa in the Foxworths’ living room.
Justine has a knack for men who make you melt and a genius for action that keeps you flipping the pages while the deeply developed characters and the complications hold you in thrall. You crack a delighted smile every few pages, too.
There’s something hugely satisfying as well about the warm sense of justice being done that permeates these books.
This series started with Quinn and Hayley Foxworth’s romance in Operation Midnight, featuring one of the most enthralling meets-cute I’ve ever seen. Quinn swoops into her hermit neighbor’s backyard in a helicopter, says “sorry” as he kidnaps her, and saves everyone’s life before the mysteries are solved and the bad guys are dispatched to prison.
Hayley’s doubts about Quinn, rather understandably, last through a good chunk of the book. Her dog Cutter, on the other hand, knows Quinn is a good guy from first sniff. He and his financial genius sister have devoted their lives and their fortunes to making things right, one unjust victim at a time, when no one else can or will.
How did Cutter come to life as a relatively obscure Belgian Tervuren? Justine answered my question in an email.
“That was born on a ferry boat out of Seattle, where I saw a gentleman with this incredibly striking dog on the car deck. They were on their way to agility trials in a town not far from my little village, and when I looked into that dog’s eyes, it was like I saw the wisdom of the world looking back at me. I knew then I had my Cutter.”
Who he is comes from her own dogs she has loved over the years, and others she has met, “from the one who could pick just my horse out of the herd, to the one helping his mom to weed by carrying the offending plants to the wheelbarrow, to the one who delighted in spinning rides on an office chair, to the one who knew with her first glimpse of my ill husband who she was here to rescue. (That is the real meaning of “rescue dog,” you know.) It’s not really that big a stretch from there to a dog who is not just very, very smart, perceptive, and brave, but something … special. And humans are so slow sometimes, that a dog just has to take charge!”
I admit to full-blown bias in believing Justine Davis was brilliant when she made a dog every bit as important in the lead-character department as the human hero and heroine in the “Cutter’s Code” series.
I did the same in my Sit, Stay, Love, where Guinevere the Saint Bernard and Lancelot the Basset Hound know how to get this love thing right, even if their humans need some coaxing. And, just like in Justine’s series, you’re never quite sure whether the canines are “something … special.”
And Cutter will prove he is all over again in February, when Operation Rafe’s Redemption is scheduled to go on sale.