Terrier (Beka Cooper book 1), by Tamora Pierce; young adult, fantasy, mystery; 608 pages (about 13 hours on CD)Tamora Pierce returns to her Tortall, but not the one I've come to know and love from her previous books. This story is set centuries before Alanna's time, and follows Beka, one of George Cooper's ancestors, and a Provost's Guard in training. The Guard (affectionately called the Dogs by most of the city's residents), is tasked with keeping peace in the market, and Beka's understaffed district doesn't have the time or the resources to do much more than that. But when a young boy is murdered, Beka digs deeper, and soon uncovers a series of crimes dating back years and years. And why was this boy chosen, to begin with?
It's a safe bet that I'll love anything Pierce writes, so it should come as no surprise that I fell in love with this book. For me, the icing on the cake was getting the chance to meet the author on a recent book tour (promoting the third book in this series, which I'll hopefully be reading soon). Beka's world is different enough from "modern" Tortall to still hold surprises, and there's some lovely foreshadowing to events that will happen in the other books, which makes it fun. I should put a warning in here: I was caught off guard by the police system of Beka's time--what we would class as corruption (taking bribes, bashing people with batons, and avoiding the organized crime of the city) is just the way things are done here, which took some getting used to. Still, I can't wait to dive into the next book: Bloodhound.
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