The last few months have been a roller coaster for Ryder Creed - he finally found his long lost sister, but finding her was only the start. Brodie has lived through some harrowing experiences, and even though she is now safe, those experiences have left a mark. Ryder and Hannah have been patiently coaxing her along, giving her support and try to gently push her boundaries to help her adapt to life outside captivity, but it is a slow process. With an impending visit from their mother looming over them, Brodie is more unsettled than usual and having terrible anxiety about the mother who she has been told wants nothing to do with a bad child like her. Having Ryder there to act as a buffer is really important, but as fate would have it, a terrible storm is bearing down on them and it will bring tornadoes in its wake - which means that Ryder and his fellow handler Jason will be out on the road trying to help rather than at home to act as the buffer Brodie so desperately wants.
To complicate matters even more, Hannah's friend Francine “Frankie” Russo is about to enter the race of her life to make it to Hannah and Ryder. When she receives a call early in the morning from one of her coworkers she doesn't think much of it, they have been working closely together, but when she hears his murder over the open phone call she realises she is in trouble. Frankie goes to the Police for help, but there isn't a lot to go on and when she figures out that they know who she is she begins a race across the country to reach Hannah and Ryder, and their promised help from FBI agent Maggie O'Dell. With the killers on her tail, it will take all of Frankie's skills and helpful paranoia to keep her safe until she can share her story with Maggie - but there is more than one storm bearing down on her, and it's not just the contract killers she has to worry about, there are killer storms out there too and they don't discriminate.
I love the Ryder Creed series, not just because of the amazing working dogs, but also because Ryder seems to get himself into all sorts of interesting situations - usually with FBI Agent Maggie O'Dell by his side or in hot pursuit. Desperate Creed is something of a break from the other books in the series, mainly because the recovery of Brodie has added some rather spectacular changes into his life, which is great but also leads to some rather interesting things he needs to deal with. The story arc was what you would expect from a Ryder Creed novel, but there was the interesting element this time of two very different stories that blended together across the novel - at times it risked making it feel like two different books, but it slowly eased together enough to make sense and make one story arc.
There were a few things that were phrased oddly, or where there was what felt like spelling and grammar mistakes, but as I am not American this may be things we don't say that Americans do. Not the strongest book in the series, but in many ways it feels like a transitional book, the series moving from being about a desperate search to find his sister, to his sister is home and he can start life as normal. Not a bad book by any means, but not my favourite book in the series so far.
If you like this book then try:
- Breaking Creed by Alex Kava
- Killing trail by Margaret Mizushima
- Eeny meeny by M.J. Arlidge
- Kill switch by Neal Baer & Jonathan Greene
- The edge of normal by Carla Norton
- The nowhere child by Christian White
- City of fear by Alafair Burke
- The vanishing season by Joanna Schaffhausen
- The slaughter man by Tony Parsons
Reviewed by Brilla
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