Reckless Creed

July 25, 2016
Well-developed characters and a strong plot bolster bestseller Kava’s intriguing third Ryder Creed novel (after 2015’s Silent Creed). K-9 specialist Ryder Creed, working with his dogs in the Conecuh National Forest in southern Alabama, discovers the body of a young woman in the shallows of the Blackwater River. That the pockets of the dead woman’s windbreaker are loaded with rocks suggests that she drowned herself. In the nearby brush are two dead robins. In Chicago, Tony Briggs, a friend of an associate of Ryder’s, has been suffering from a strange illness; Tony soon falls to his death from a high building. Meanwhile, FBI agent Maggie O’Dell, the lead of the author’s other series, links together instances of bird flu with the disappearance of rogue scientist Clare Shaw, the director of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) facility in North Carolina. O’Dell and Ryder join forces to prevent the outbreak of avian flu from becoming a nationwide epidemic. Kava does a fine job depicting the work of the search-and-rescue canines. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media.

In this third volume of the Ryder Creed series, Creed and his search-and-rescue dogs team up again with FBI agent Maggie O'Dell as they connect a series of suspicious deaths in several states. All signs point to a mad scientist who escaped from them in the previous volume SILENT CREED. Narrator Graham Winton doesn't help listeners keep the many characters straight as the team members find themselves slowed by officials of various government agencies, some trying to help them solve the mystery and others intentionally impeding them. The female characters, in particular, are not distinct enough, making the action somewhat difficult to follow. More liberal use of accents, timbre, and pitch would have been helpful. Still, that shouldn't stop fans of Kava's work from listening. D.E.M. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine