Copyright 2005 by John Sandford. Published by the Penguin Group of G. P. Putnam Sons, New York NY.
This is the 16th in the popular “Prey” series featuring detective Lucas Davenport. While in later books Davenport takes on other jobs, in this one he is still with Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), Minnesota’s state-level crime-solving unit. This case invoves a serial murderer who is somehow linked to the “Big Three” – a trio of very disturbed serial killers incarcerated for life in Minnesota’s facility for the criminally insane. Just how the new killer is associated with the three jailed killers is the crux of this story.
Sandford’s style is to present the story in a series of very short passages. I normally like this style – it is similar to Tom Clancy’s – but Sandford takes it to an extreme. Sometimes the passage is a single sentence. And there are a lot of characters in this story and I sometimes had difficulty remembering who they were. That might be more a testimony to my age and how long it took me to finish this book than a criticism of his style, but it was a factor in my enjoyment of the book.
Sandford spins some very complex yarns and he is pretty good at keeping the reader guessing. In this book there are two prime suspects who turn out to be more victim than suspect. And he doesn’t skimp on the body count, either: I think the total number of corpses in this one exceeded 15. But could Davenport have done better at reducing that count? Yes. Mistakes were made and some of the carnage was due to investigative errors. Not Davenport’s most shining moment.
But a pretty good read.
7 out of 10.