Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Wounded at the Lake: The Wounded SEAL Trilogy, Book One is a romantic suspense novel written by Mitzi Pool Bridges. When Cooper Browning was a Navy SEAL, he had been impressed by the performance of the military dogs he saw in action. He resolved when he left the service to get involved in training military service dogs, and he and his brother Dirk set up a dog training enterprise that quickly became the provider of the most-highly trained and sought-after dogs in addition to their private investigator agency. Coop and his brothers have been troubled about a fellow SEAL’s little girl who was in a comatose state after escaping from her abductors, and he decided to go to Lake Houston with his favorite Malinois, Thor, to think things out a bit. When they get to the two-lot parcel Coop’s grandfather had originally purchased, they were enjoying the peaceful quiet of a late fall afternoon when the silence was broken by the sound of a car engine and, moments later, a gunshot. Coop sent Thor to investigate the sound and, following the dog, discovered a woman’s body. At first, he was sure she was dead, but soon he discovered a weak pulse. When he was able to revive her, she had no recollection of who she was or how she came to be in that car to be killed, but she was adamant that going to the hospital or notifying the police would expose her to certain death.

Mitzi Pool Bridges’ romantic suspense novel, Wounded at the Lake, is an impressive blend of the romance and private investigator genres. It also works quite nicely as a psychological thriller as Lori, the amnesiac woman Cooper and Thor rescue, begins to experience random flashes of a terrifying and brutal past. Bridges’ plot is tight and well-constructed, and her characters are marvelous, especially the three SEAL brothers, Shorty, Lori and Thor, the Belgian Malinois who saves Lori’s life and captures her heart at the same time. I particularly enjoyed reading about the methods these ex-SEAL brothers used for training their dogs for military service and seeing how Lori fitted so easily into that aspect of Cooper’s world. Wounded at the Lake is an impressive and satisfying read that keeps the reader on edge and wanting more. It’s highly recommended.