Much like its title, Sara Driscoll’s Summit’s Edge takes us to the precipice and keeps us there. It starts with a bang—literally—in the cabin of a private plane heading over the Rockies and, while maintaining a ticking clock that intrigues and keeps us in suspense, it marches forward through a perilous journey at high altitude where nature’s extremes are as much against the hapless victims as the perpetrator.

Jen J. Danna aka Sara Driscoll

Part of Driscoll’s FBI K-9 series, Summit’s Edge follows Meg Jennings and her black labrador partner, Hawk. They’re part of an elite team that travels the country to wherever they’re needed for high-risk rescue operations. This book locates them in Colorado near Aspen, where they’re tested by the harsh elements of the mountains in May.

A private jet has been hijacked by at least one armed individual, and an emergency call goes out just before contact is lost entirely. Whoever took the plane down knew exactly how to disable the tracking capabilities, ensuring there was no signal to lead rescuers to the crash. While a mountain rescue like this one would normally be conducted by mountain-trained search and rescue teams in Colorado, they’ve requested the help of dogs trained in scenting humans, holding out hope that there may be survivors, though chances are slim as night sets in.

Driscoll finds a seamless way of incorporating information the reader needs to know about the inherent risks of rapidly going up in altitude and how the dogs operate within the progressing story so it doesn’t unnecessarily slow the narrative down. Most Coloradans are already at least partially aware of these risks to begin with, which makes the story all the more compelling. What may not be as well known is that the risks apply to canines too, but there are ways to mitigate altitude sickness if undertaken in advance, both for humans and dogs. A team being deployed for an emergency doesn’t have the time to fully prepare, putting the rescuers at just as much risk as the possible survivors. If it weren’t for Meg’s fiancé, she and Hawk wouldn’t even have had that much preparation for the risks of a mountain rescue.

Meg and Hawk aren’t alone, joined by Brian and his German shepherd, Lacey. The four are a well-oiled team, but where ego could get in the way for some, they know they’re out of their depth when it comes to mountain rescues. They’re teamed up with experts and pushed to their limits as they scale a fourteener in the Maroon Bells area of the Elk Mountains. Here, they face an unstable surface of scree, extreme cold, a pending storm and the risk of avalanche that’s common in the spring, all while monitoring for signs of altitude sickness and looking for survivors, not to mention a man with a gun who was willing to take out a planeload of people to complete his personal mission.

The owner of the plane is the head of a pharmaceutical company known for pushing a new, addictive drug on doctors and their patients. Upon finding the plane and, shockingly, a handful of survivors, it’s discovered that the CEO is dead and his son has chased the gunman into the mountains. Faced with triaging the survivors and getting them off the mountain, the team falls even farther behind the hijacker, unsure where he’s gone and in what condition they’ll find him. What they do know is that they can’t let him get off the mountain. He’s a danger to anyone he encounters and he’ll be a lot harder to find once he’s back in civilization.

Throughout all this, Meg is less than two weeks out from her wedding to her firefighter/paramedic fiancé, adding another incentive to hunt down the hijacker as fast as possible. This is complicated by the fact that she’s afraid of heights, an inescapable detail her human partner is aware of, but no one else. Scaling a fourteener is the ultimate act of facing her fear, but she’s driven—determined to find survivors and bring in the bad guy.

Summit’s Edge is a fast-paced adventure tale with likable characters who are good at what they do; the risks are many, and they can only rely on themselves to get out of it alive. This is an easy read with a lot of familiar details for Colorado readers, while those unfamiliar with the mountains are met with thorough descriptions of the setting that suck them directly into the story. At times, it feels like the dialogue overtakes the narrative, but it always comes back to the action in the end. This is the ninth book in the series, something familiar readers can slip comfortably into, while readers new to Driscoll can enjoy her deft storytelling and get to know the characters. That’s not always true of series, but this one is well executed to be a pleasurable read for readers new and old.

Jen J. Danna ‘s background is in infectious diseases research, but she’s got three series out under her pen name, Sara Driscoll. Based in Toronto, Ontario, she also writes the NYPD Negotiators and the Lowell Forensic Mysteries series with Ann Vanderlaan. The first book in the FBI K-9 series, Lone Wolf, is an Amazon Best Seller.

Fans of Colorado’s Margaret Mizushima will also enjoy Driscoll’s FBI K-9 books, and Summit’s Edge is a great place to start. Released on November 26, it’s already flying off the shelves and garnering rave reviews.