Tara Janzen: Crazy Wild

Crazy Wild, nothing to go wild for: D


The Special Defense Force (SDF) is called in when suspected terrorist Dominika Starkova conceals the whereabouts of a nuclear warhead missile from several buyers whose interests are at best hostile to the U.S. Creed Rivera, surfer and pickpocket turned SDF agent, is assigned to find her and bring her in. But Dominika is actually librarian Cordelia "Cody" Stark from Wichita, who wanted to meet her real father, whose legacy to her was knowledge of the bomb's whereabouts. The CIA is also looking for Cody and trying to get SDF to back off, so the plot changes moment by moment from Creed and Cody's insane escape from the library, pursued by terrorists, the Denver police, and the CIA. Ultimately, the bad guys get theirs, and Creed and Cody become passionate lovers before she is arrested.


Sadly enough, Janzen is unable to make me go wild for Creed and Cody – her implausible plot turns out to be… implausible and the story is somewhat of a drag.

When I first picked Crazy Wild up, I didn’t care about Creed. Who’s Creed? Oh yea, that guy who was working with JT and got beaten up. I put down the book still not caring about Creed.

Creed has returned, after having witnessed the death of JT and is (logically) tormented. He is therefore given an “easy” job of looking after Cody, or Dominika, a supposed terrorist who knows the location of a hidden nuclear bomb.

They venture the streets of Denver and go through the attacks of multiple terrorist attacks, all of whom want to know the location of the bomb.

Things happen, people shoot at each other, Creed and Cody “fall in love,” people get caught, terrorists lose and the good people win… etc etc etc.

The romance is non-existent and after running through the streets with Cody and Creed (three hundred and something pages worth of running through and adventuring), I didn’t find their attraction believable and I didn’t find their romance to be romantic. While Janzen might have been able to pull this off for another couple, it didn’t work here.

Furthermore, the story introduced the to-be couple – Skeeter and Dylan, and as much as I love Dylan and Skeeter separately, when I read of them having feelings for each other, I get the heebie-jeebies and immediately think, “JAILBAIT!” I’m interested to see how Janzen pulls it off (or doesn’t).

Conclusion: Not worth a read. Who cares about them? Not I!