Worth a read purely for the dog, who steals the show! The characters aren't especially interesting or believable, and the pace of this supposed thriller takes a lengthy pause in the middle to enjoy the peculiarities of small-town America, but it's a decently sweet story of a wounded paramilitary dude very preoccupied with his manliness-- he eats "he-man" food [eye roll]-- and an apparently "just administrative" [what?] small-town chief of police who has hefty emotional barriers and a diva golden retriever.