The Rescue

By: T. Jefferson Parker

Narrated by: Victoria Villarreal

"Narrator Victoria Villarreal keeps this canine-themed thriller on track, providing the empathy and consistency required to get into the mind of Joe, a mutt with a gifted nose, a DEA pedigree, and a price on his head."—AudioFile

The Rescue is a gripping thriller that explores the strength of the human-animal bond and how far we will go to protect what we love by three-time Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker.

While reporting on a Tijuana animal shelter, journalist Bettina Blazak falls in love with one of her story’s subjects—an adorable Mexican street dog who is being treated for a mysterious gunshot wound. Bettina impulsively adopts the dog, who she names Felix after the veterinarian who saved him.

In investigating Felix’s past, Bettina discovers that his life is nothing like what she assumed. For one thing, he’s not a Mexican street dog at all. A former DEA drug-sniffing dog, Felix has led a very colorful, dangerous, and profitable life. With Bettina’s story going viral, some interesting people are looking for Felix, making him a target—again.

Bettina soon finds herself drawn into a deadly criminal underworld from which she and her beloved dog may not return.

Other Forge Books by T. Jefferson Parker:

A Thousand Steps

A Macmillan Audio production from Forge Books.

©2023 T. Jefferson Parker (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"T. Jefferson Parker is a marvel. I’ve been reading him with delight and admiration for years. The Rescue again shows that he hits the high water mark for crime fiction every time out. Graceful prose, nuanced characters, an emotional thread woven through each scene tying it to a propulsive plot. Whether he’s writing about cartels or PD, street dogs or reluctant heroines, he gets to the authentic and the compelling.\" —Gregg Hurwitz, the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Horse

“Parker’s The Rescue ain’t no street mutt of a book, but rather a Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show blue-ribbon, pure pedigree of a novel with claws sharpened and fangs bared. Fass!\" —Craig Johnson, bestselling author of the Longmire mystery series

I enjoyed this book. Liked the characters and the story.

There was no super hero thoughtlessly gunning down bad guys, but still an interesting unique story.

Maybe it was me…

… I have to admit when I saw a book by T Jefferson Parker I was hopeful that it would be an addition to the Roland Ford series. But I like Parker and decided to give this new book a shot.
The publisher’s summary is pretty accurate. The protagonist (Bettina) is a journalist doing a story about a dog shelter in Mexico. She adopts a dog with a gunshot wound. He’s been at the shelter for 30 days and is going to be destroyed. The shelter just doesn’t have enough space to keep the dogs indefinitely. After everything the dog has been through plus the extraordinary measures the vet took to save his life Bettina can’t stand to see this be his end.
The story is told in good part by reflections and current events along the dog’s lifeline. After bringing him to her home in California Bettina renames him Felix. Then she starts getting emails and phone calls about the dog. Two people claim he was theirs. One boy raised him for his first year. The other is a man who had him as an adult working dog detecting drugs. Both would like to get him back. Bettina doesn’t want to give him up. She has already developed an attachment and besides, if it weren’t for her the dog wouldn’t even be alive.
The story continues along this path and has some suspense but it never really reaches the pace or level I’ve come to expect from this author. It’s a good story and I feel horrible saying it’s not one of his better works.
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Hard to Love

I have read most of Parker's books, loved some and liked others. Unfortunately, it is hard to love a story where the protagonist has no redeeming qualities...except being pretty. It is hard to love a protagonist that at one point asks if people will think she is just hot-headed and stupid apparently not understanding that is an accurate description.

She is narcissistic, self-centered, irrational and emotional, mindlessly bumbling among automatic weapon toting cartel gangs armed with pepper gel without a thought to the consequences. Her favorite refrain is "Don't tell me what to do," while desperately needing a keeper to do just that. From double-crossing a cartel jefe in a manner that can only be traced back to her, then dining publicly to make it easier for the cartel to attack...to returning to the scene after escaping, she continuously mistakes stupidity for bravery. It was like every horror movie where the audience is screaming at the actors, "NO...don't split up and go into the haunted house!"

That being said, the parts where the dog is the narrator ala Spencer Quinn's Chet and Bernie were enjoyable. Hard to not love a "talking" dog.

Not exceptional

Long time fan of this author. I didn’t care for the tepid character development and the sleepy tone of the narrator. It isn’t that it isn’t good, but not what I have come to expect from Jefferson T Parker based upon his preceding work which I found to be exceptional, and thought the narrations of those works to be more energetic. I love dog books and in the acknowledgments at the end of the book he mentions my all time favorite by Robert Crais: Suspect. If you haven’t read or listened to that book, and you like dog stories, give that a try.