A Breed Apart

Medical thriller meets gritty detective novel in this extremely well-written and suspenseful tale of a most unusual dog. When police detective Elliot Elliot is ordered to recover a missing research canine, he stumbles across a mysterious brain scan that contradicts the official records on his ex-girlfriend's comatose husband. In counterpoint, ruthless contract killer Victor Korvin seeks to capture the dog and deliver her to a financier desperate to save himself from a rapidly advancing medical condition. The nameless dog herself provides a third major viewpoint as her enhanced brain tries to make sense of the changing conditions that threaten her survival. Davis (The Third Pandemic as Pierre Ouellette) skillfully interweaves taut plotting, nuanced characters and convincing insight into the mind of a superintelligent animal who's still, at heart, a dog. (May)