Title: Stolen
Prey
Author: JohnSandford
Review: Even
for John Sandford and the entire Prey series, this book was violent. People are killed in long torturous ways, and
by people I mean families. The saddest
part of the whole horrendous crime is it is based in reality. The author did not exaggerate.
The story opens up with the violent murder of a well to do
family by a Mexican drug gang. Given the
viciousness of the crime Lucas and his cohorts are immediately brought in to
solve this case before any more victims can pile up. The most important message of this book is
not to get involved in gangs, and especially do not try to cross them. These
guys are not playing around when it comes to their business. They have escalated the level of violence so
high in Mexico now there isn’t a soft option when it comes to a response.
In classic police procedural fashion Davenport and crew
slowly begin to uncover the facts of the case and through realistic action they
slowly plod there way through the clues.
It is in these small steps that Sandford is a master of the genre; never
taking giant leaps of logic to advance the plot. The real genius of the series is how he managed
to make such a hard guy like Lucas be so likable at the same time.
The only downside is the side plot involving Virgil Flowers,
one of the detectives working for Davenport (and the star of his own book
series too). Davenport managed to get
mugged at the ATM and he puts the f@#$ing Flowers on the case. There is always an element of gallows humor
in the books and usually it’s interwoven into the main story a little
better. With the graphically violent
nature of the main story this plot was just too jarring and out of place. I can appreciate what the author was going
for but it wasn’t working for me.
Stolen Prey was a good book, and it is a fantastic
series. You can start anywhere, but if
you are like me you will soon find yourself wanting to catch up with all 22
books. It is American police procedural
at its best.
Publisher: Putnam
ISBN:
978-0-399-15768-4
Copyright: 2012
Pages: 402
Quick Review: 4
stars out of 5
Why I Read It: I
love crime fiction and it is based in my home state of Minnesota – what’s not
to love. Plus I have kept up with entire
series (this is book 22).
Where I Obtained the
Book: At my local library
Synopsis: Lucas Davenport has seen many terrible murder
scenes. This is one of the worst. In the small Minnesota town of Wayzata, an
entire family has been killed—husband, wife, two daughters, dogs.
There’s something about the scene that pokes at Lucas’s cop
instincts—it looks an awful lot like the kind of scorched-earth retribution
he’s seen in drug killings sometimes. But this is a seriously upscale town, and
the husband was an executive vice president at a big bank. It just doesn’t seem
to fit.
Until it does. And where it leads Lucas will take him into
the darkest nightmare of his life.
Author Biography: John
Sandford was born John Camp on February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He
attended the public schools in Cedar Rapids, graduating from Washington High
School in 1962. He then spent four years at the University of Iowa, graduating
with a bachelor's degree in American Studies in 1966. In 1966, he married Susan
Lee Jones of Cedar Rapids, a fellow student at the University of Iowa. He was
in the U.S. Army from 1966-68, worked as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau
Southeast Missourian from 1968-1970, and went back to the University of Iowa
from 1970-1971, where he received a master's degree in journalism. He was a
reporter for The Miami Herald from 1971-78, and then a reporter for the St.
Paul Pioneer-Press from 1978-1990; in 1980, he was a finalist for a Pulitzer
Prize, and he won the Pulitzer in 1986 for a series of stories about a midwestern
farm crisis. From 1990 to the present he has written thriller novels. He's also
the author of two non-fiction books, one on plastic surgery and one on art. He
is the principal financial backer of a major archeological project in the
Jordan Valley of Israel, with a website at www.rehov.org In addition to
archaeology, he is deeply interested in art (painting) and photography. He both
hunts and fishes. He has two children, Roswell and Emily, and one grandson,
Benjamin. His wife, Susan, died of metastasized breast cancer in May, 2007, and
is greatly missed.
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