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.
