I love Lt. Samantha Spade as a character. She's funny, irreverent and a reluctant leader. She has a sense of humor about herself, and despite her mouth a pretty high tolerance for idiots. She runs a research team that looks at whether or not weird backyard technology has real-life military applications. This time around it's a robot dog that finds (and runs on) it's own natural fuel sources. She's disgusted to find out dead things are on it's menu, and mad her chief techno wizard didn't rule that out (since they can tweak the list of what it searches for). When it tracks "dead" to a pickup truck, and they find three severed heads on a cooler, it's a case of "here we go again." Same cast of characters, with a deepening relationship between her and Mitchell. His past comes back to haunt them both. Her ex-husband makes an appearance--charming parasite that HE is. Her annoying relatives won't leave her alone. All in all, an entertaining read.