Phantom Prey by John Sandford: A review

I've read a few of the books in this series, four I think prior to this one, but it's been a while since I read one and I didn't have a real firm grasp of the Lucas Davenport story. I remembered that he was from Minnesota and that he was a detective in a crime detection state agency there. And that was about it. So I came to Phantom Prey with no particular pre-conceived expectations.

In this one, Alyssa, a woman friend of Weather, Davenport's wife, arrives home to find that her home security system had been disarmed and there are bloodstains on the wall of her kitchen. She expected her daughter, Frances, and her housekeeper, Helen, to be there, but the house is empty. There's no clue where the two have gone or where they might be. The housekeeper does finally show up but Frances remains missing.

The other thing is that there was a lot of blood in the kitchen and testing reveals that it is Frances' type. The case becomes a missing person investigation but there is an underlying belief that she is probably dead. The police seem to be making no progress on the case, so Alyssa contacts her friend Weather and requests that she ask her husband to get involved in the investigation. Lucas doesn't have much on his plate at the moment and probably welcomes the distraction of a hot case.

The action of the book is set in the early 2000s and Lucas learns that Frances was heavily into the Goth scene in the Twin Cities which was apparently very active at that time. He's only just begun his investigation when two of the Goths who were a part of Frances' circle of friends are murdered. This, of course, increases fears that if she is not already dead she may soon be and adds an extra element of urgency to Davenport's inquiries.  

I seem to remember that the other books in the Davenport series that I have read featured a good bit of humor and that was the case with this one as well. This was the eighteenth in the series so Sandford obviously had his formula well established by the time the book was published in 2008. There are now a surprising thirty-two books in this series, plus the writer has at least a couple of other series going all of which simply boggles my mind. How does a writer come up with that many different ideas? I guess that the answer may be that they are not "different" ideas; they are simply a new set of characters and situations set within that same formula and all the writer has to do is fill in the blanks. Sounds easy, doesn't it? But it probably isn't. 

The Investigator by John Sandford: A review

 

I have read a few of John Sandford's books in the Prey series featuring Lucas Davenport. This book is a literal offspring of that series. It's the first in a series featuring Davenport's adopted daughter Letty Davenport.

Letty is in her mid-20s and a graduate of Stanford. She works for a U.S. senator named Christopher Colles in a desk job but she's bored with her assignments. Then the senator offers her a chance to go into the field as a liaison between his office and the Department of Homeland Security. 

In her first assignment in that position, she is sent to Texas along with DHS investigator John Kaiser to try to find out what is happening in regard to thefts of crude oil. The senator is not so concerned about the lost oil but wants to know where the money from its sale is going. Who is selling the oil and what they are doing with the profits? The suspicion is that a particularly nasty militia group led by a woman is involved.

Letty and Kaiser head out to Texas, developing their working relationship along the way. From an unpromising beginning to their association they soon learn to trust and depend on each other. The two have different areas of expertise and their talents balance one another, making for a stronger partnership. 

In Texas, the two investigators find your basic nest of vipers and have to figure out how to deal with them. Sandford is a master storyteller and his descriptions of the Texas border towns and the people who live there rang true. He excelled at his world-building and at creating compelling characters. He told the story from different points of view which gave the reader a better insight into Letty's and Kaiser's stories as well as that of their antagonists.

The story flowed well and the action came quickly and built to an exciting conclusion that made the book hard to put down. It seemed quite realistic as if it might have been plucked out of yesterday's headlines. It was a good beginning for a series that has possibilities for growth. Parenthetically, it reminded me quite a bit of Michael Connelly's series featuring female detective Renee Ballard as a spinoff from his Harry Bosch series. In this case, Sandford spins off of his Lucas Davenport series. Do I sense a trend among mystery writers developing here?

My rating: 4 of 5 stars 

Eyes of Prey by John Sandford: A review

This wasn't really the book I had intended to read next, but there it was, already queued up in my Kindle, so, what the heck? Might as well tick that box.

Maybe it was Fate having its way with me. After all, the Minneapolis Police Department has been much in the news recently, following a police shooting there. A civilian who had called the police to report a possible sexual assault was shot and killed by one of the policemen who responded to the call. The irony here was that the victim this time, instead of a young African-American shot by a white cop, was a pretty, blonde, white woman shot by a black cop - a Somali-American. Where are the usual suspects telling us that the victim was probably a thug who deserved it and cops are always heroes? 

Ah, well, enough editorializing. Back to the safer world of fiction where things often really are black and white.

Eyes of Prey is the third in the very long-running Lucas Davenport crime fiction series. It was first published in 1991, so it came into being in an entirely different world. Nevertheless, it seems to hold up well and doesn't feel particularly dated. True, Davenport's and his fellow policemen's reflexive attitude toward women is blatantly sexist, but I suspect that is no less accurate today than it was in 1991.

This time out, Davenport faces off with two killers who are involved in a Strangers on a Train scenario - "You kill my inconvenient wife (or, in one case, boss) and I'll kill yours." 

It all seems to go off like clockwork, with one minor hitch: When the killer goes to kill the inconvenient wife, there is another person in the house. The woman's lover comes down the stairs in time to get a look at the killer and is able to report a partial description of him.

The killers try to figure out who the lover was and they settle on a likely candidate. And one of them kills him. Except they got the wrong man.

Then they decide to kill a random woman at the mall just to muddy the waters.

The signature bit in each of these killings is destruction of the eyes, because the brains of the whole plan is a psychopath who is haunted by eyes. He sees the eyes of his victims watching him unless he destroys them. And, oh, yes, he has had many other victims. He is a serial killer.

The madness continues. One killing leads to another and police struggle to make sense of it all since the killings seem to be unrelated.

Meanwhile, Davenport is struggling with serious depression. His relationship with the married woman from the last book ended, but not before it had destroyed his tenuous connection with his on-and-off girlfriend, the mother of his daughter. He seldom sees the daughter or her mother anymore, and there doesn't seem to be any anchor or joy in his life.  

He does start up a new romantic relationship with an actress, but that does not end well. And he works his street contacts, trying to come up with a lead to solve the vicious murders.

This book, in my opinion, was an improvement on the first two of the series. The plot seemed tighter and Lucas Davenport seemed a bit more human, rather than superhuman, and thus more sympathetic. There is no mystery involved. We know who the killers are right from the first, but it is interesting to watch as the police try to work it out.

This has been a lengthy crime series that is still going and still makes it to the best seller lists. This book gives a glimmer of why that might be.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Shadow Prey by John Sandford: A review

My considered opinion is that Minneapolis detective Lucas Davenport is a jerk. He's one of those guys who sees himself as a gift to women of all shapes, sizes, and kinds. He excuses his behavior as a Lothario by saying that he just LOVES women. And so he moves back and forth among a gaggle of women giving them the precious gift of himself and, quite often, his sperm. 

He has a more or less steady girlfriend with whom he has a child, but when a NYPD lieutenant comes to Minneapolis to assist in the investigation of a series of killings that may be related to one that occurred in New York, he just can't help pursuing her and eventually falling into bed with her, in spite of the fact that she is married and has two teenage children. 

He's supposed to be in the "intelligence" section of the Minneapolis police department and yet he drives around town in his Porsche in order to meet with his contacts. Not exactly the discrete behavior one might expect from one in such a position. His co-workers and superiors seem in awe of his abilities as a detective, but, frankly, I don't see much evidence of sharp detective work. He just seems to blunder around until information falls into his lap.

This is the second book in this series and, so far, they read like the fantasy of a man in mid-life crisis. It occurs to me that I just might not be the prime audience for whom these books are being written.

All that being said, this is an interesting story which explores the fraught relations between the Native American community of Minnesota - and, by extension, America - and the police and larger community. 

Here we meet Sam and Aaron Crow, two aging Sioux radicals who have planned a terror campaign against government officials whom they deem enemies of Native American people by virtue of crimes they have committed against the People - crimes for which they have never been punished. The Crows aim to see that punishment is meted out before they die.

They have sent their followers out to various locations around the country to dispense justice with ceremonial stone knives which they wear around their necks. A slumlord in Minneapolis, a rising political star in Manhattan, a Federal judge in Oklahoma City, all fall to the knife. But then two Native Americans in Minneapolis, a drug-addled teenager and a social worker, also are killed in the same manner. Has the killer turned on his own people? How can all these murders be related?

One feels a great deal of empathy for the Crows. Their cause seems righteous on many levels. The men whom they sent their followers to kill had committed crimes, often heinous crimes, against Native Americans. But can such violence ever be justified? Maybe when there is no hope of receiving justice through the courts? At least within the pages of a book, we can cheer such retribution without any actual blood being spilled.

But what of the murder of the teenager and the social worker? Their killer is a psycho feeding off the energy of the Crows' campaign. And that may be a natural consequence of such violence.

So, all in all, a good story, but I just cannot like the main character. This is a very long-running series. This book was published in 1990 and it's still going. I wonder if Lucas Davenport ever grows up during all those years.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

  

Rules of Prey by John Sandford: A review

Rules of Prey was the first in what has become a very long-running series featuring Minneapolis police detective Lucas Davenport. It was first published in 1989.

The series was recently recommended to me by someone very familiar with my addiction to reading mystery series. Recommendations by this person usually work out well for me so I decided to give it a try.

In the beginning, I had my doubts about this particular suggestion. Lucas Davenport seemed like a bit of a jerk, and I wasn't at all sure I could warm up to him. Plus, the story involved a torturer/rapist/serial murderer of women - not really what I prefer to read about. But as I kept reading, gradually, I became rather engrossed by the plot and interested to see how the writer was going to bring it all together. By the end, I still thought Lucas Davenport was a jerk and I was bothered by some of the writing, but, on the whole, the story overcame those objections.

The serial killer is known as the maddog (one word) and he has the Twin Cities in a state of suspense, wondering where he will strike next. Each of his kills follows a distinctive method, and, after a while, it emerges that each of his victims is a particular type - dark hair, same body type, etc. He is careful to leave no clues and no possibility of DNA at the scenes of the murders, but, with each body, he leaves a note, a note that lists one of his "rules." For example: "Never have a motive"; "Never carry a weapon after it has been used"; "Never follow a discernible pattern." He seems quite mad but intelligent.

(Parenthetically, this was one of the writer's tics that really started to annoy me. He reminded us at every instance of our meeting his maddog that he was intelligent. Moreover, he lays it on pretty thick about Lucas Davenport's intelligence at every opportunity. AND, he assures us that, although Davenport sleeps around quite a bit, he's really only interested in "intelligent" women! In fact, intelligent seems to be one of Sandford's favorite words. Maybe he needs a thesaurus.) 

Anyway, enter Lucas Davenport. He's independently wealthy, thanks to the fact that he designs very successful games in his spare time. He wears expensive Italian suits and drives a Porsche. He's a former hockey player who loves Emily Dickinson's poetry. He's a gambler and he's willing to bend the rules if it will help him achieve his idea of justice. He has killed five men in the line of duty as a cop.

While the rest of the police force follows a plan in trying to track down the serial killer, Davenport is special. He's given the leniency to follow his own rules as long as they bring results, and nobody seems to ask any embarrassing questions about just how he achieves his aims.

This book is adeptly plotted and, once it gets going, it moves along at fast pace. My only real criticisms of it are the aforementioned writer's tics, plus the unrelieved dark and violent nature of the story. I don't know if all the books in the series are like this, but if they are, I probably won't last long in reading them. But I'm prepared to give it another chance. First books in a series are not always indicative of what is to come. This one I would give three-and-a-half stars. Oh, what the heck - I'll be generous and give it four. 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars