Tag Archives: Lucas Davenport

‘Judgment Prey,’ by John Sandford

It occurred to me (and not for the first time) as I read John Sandford’s latest Lucas Davenport novel, Judgment Prey, that these latest books in the series are about an entirely different character than the early Preys were. Back at the start, the emphasis was on street justice, and Lucas seemed to be a borderline psycho. Now he’s a settled family man anchoring stories that push gun control, and Lucas tends to operate as a buffer against violence.

As Judgment Prey opens, Lucas is still recovering from the wounds he received in the big gunfight at the end of the last book. He isn’t 100% yet, but he’s pushing to get back in shape. When one of his superiors asks him to look in on a crime scene, he puts up only formal resistance.

A federal judge has been gunned down in his home, along with his two young sons (the baby in the crib was spared). The widow, Margaret Cooper, discovers the bodies and is traumatized. A half-hearted attempt to make the crime look like a robbery gone wrong doesn’t convince. This was a hit, and it was personal.

Lucas, who is now a federal marshal, is allowed to join in the investigation as a sort of consultant, teaming up with his old buddy, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers.

The investigation will entail examining the judge’s will, and the organizations he’s involved in. Lucas begins to smell a rat.  One of the charities mentioned in his will, Heart/Twin Cities, starts looking pretty sketchy (this could be inspired by recent Twin Cities news in the real world). Which raises questions about its director, a local society figure who seems on closer inspection to be all façade. But he’s got an iron-clad alibi…

 There’s a fair amount of dramatic tension in all this, but we’re also following Margaret the widow, who responds to her bereavement with action – she and her best friend are laying plans to trap the killer and shoot him dead.

A well-crafted story. Interesting characters. Cop humor. I got everything I came for in Judgment Prey. Recommended for adults. Cautions for violence and language. The ending is kind of ambiguous and troubling.

‘Righteous Prey,’ by John Sandford

Four cars were parked in a line, with two side-by-side overhead doors: a gunmetal gray Lexus SUV, a red Ferrari, a black Mercedes SUV, and a reddish-orange Porsche Carrera Turbo. A group of cops were discussing whether the Ferrari and the Porsche should be seized as evidence, and if so, who’d get to drive them to the impound lot.

I’ve been a big fan of John Sandford’s exciting and amusing “Prey” series for a good percentage of its long history (the hero, Lucas Davenport, would be retired and out of action long ago in real life, but fiction permits active employment for the life of the author [at least]). Today, hero Lucas Davenport, long with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, is sort of a freelance US Marshal. He gets to work on only the jobs that interest him, due to his immense personal wealth and Washington connections. In Righteous Prey, he teams up (again) with his buddy Virgil Flowers, who’s still in the BCA, to deal with a domestic murder ring.

One thing I’ve always appreciated in the series is the author’s ability to set aside his personal politics (which I’m pretty sure must be far to the left of mine) and present fairly balanced pictures of conservatives and liberals. And he’s generally avoided controversial subjects.

This book is less evenhanded, though I’m sure he made an effort.

What’s happening here is that a group of anonymous individuals, all of them Bitcoin billionaires, have formed a group called “the Five.” Their purpose is to kill “a**holes” (hereinafter to be called “targets” in this review). People they consider evil, who do only harm to the world, and who are personally hateful. Each of them will kill one of the five targets, after which they will distribute a news release, and then make a generous donation to some charitable organization whose work counteracts whatever harm they think the target has done.

When one target is murdered in Minneapolis, Lucas and Virgil get involved. They’ll be traveling around the country playing catch-up with these billionaire killers, and it will all culminate in a running fight in Long Island, New York.

Generally, Sandford is as evenhanded as usual. He does one thing that’s uncharacteristic, though, if my recollection of the previous books is correct. He throws in a message this time – the evils of bump stocks.

Now, I’ll confess I’m pretty ignorant about bump stocks. No personal experience. The sources I’ve read have generally defended them, saying they really don’t translate into anything drastically new and lethal. But the way Sandford describes them, they turn an AR rifle into the equivalent of a tommy gun, spraying death all around, turning a lone gunman into a one-man commando team against whom the police are helpless.

I don’t know. I’m skeptical.

Other points of interest – Virgil is now writing a novel, and he complains that he “only” expects an advance of $2,500.00 or so. This proves John Sandford lives in a different universe than the one I’m in.

I believe I read he no longer lives in Minneapolis. One piece of evidence for that development is that he thinks the Bakers Square in Highland Park is still open. Sadly, it closed down forever, early in the Lockdown.

There’s a vile conservative talk show host in the story, who may be very loosely based on the late Rush Limbaugh. However, he’s such a caricature that I found it hard take offense. Liberals, no doubt, will think the portrait spot on.

On the plus side, there’s a Travis McGee reference.

Recommended, except that strong gun rights activists probably won’t like it. Cautions for foul language and violence.

‘Ocean Prey,’ by John Sandford

Novel title "Ocean Prey" distorted by water

“Is this gonna ruin my career?” Devlin asked.

“No, you’re too obscure to ruin. Get a few more years under your belt and a little more status, get closer to a pension, then you’ll be worth ruining. Ruining you now would be like shooting a squirrel and mounting its head. Nobody would be impressed.”

Lucas Davenport returns for the umpteenth time in yet another Prey novel, Ocean Prey. John Sandford’s hero is a millionaire, a former cop, a former agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and now a US Marshal. We’re told he’s fifty-two, but I’m pretty sure that means some time compression has happened – as is allowed in the world of fictional serial heroes. I think John D. MacDonald said he aged Travis McGee one year for every three in the real world.

In the ocean off Miami, the crew of a speedboat, interrupted while collecting something unknown from the ocean bottom, gets into a fire fight with the Coast Guard, killing two officers before escaping. They disappear without a trace, and police divers aren’t able to locate whatever it was they were looking for underwater. The case goes to the FBI, and when they can’t find any clues, they go to the US Marshals and their agency gunslinger – Marshal Lucas Davenport.

Lucas starts poking around, along with Bob, one of his regular partners. They begin making some connections, and then things go very bad.

That’s when Lucas calls in the big gun – his Minnesota friend Virgil Flowers (who doesn’t actually use guns much). Virgil is the perfect guy to go in undercover, after a crash course in deep ocean diving.

The Prey books pretty much guarantee a good read, and Ocean Prey did not disappoint. The characters are always intriguing, and nobody writes cop banter better than Sandford. Lots of action and suspense, with both heavy and light moments.

Recommended, with cautions for frank dialogue.

‘Masked Prey,’ by John Sandford

“Then I’m like that Mission: Impossible thing, where the secretary will disavow any knowledge of me?”

“So fast your head will spin off—although it’d probably be a deputy assistant undersecretary in charge of cover-ups,” Henderson said. “You’re not nearly important enough to be disavowed by an actual secretary.”

John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport “Prey” series rolls along, dispensing dependable entertainment for the thriller fan. I’m kind of sad Davenport has taken his show on the road, operating as a US Marshal now, rather than sticking to Minnesota, my stomping grounds. But the stories remain good.

In Masked Prey, the teenaged daughter of a female senator, who has made herself a minor celebrity through podcasting, discovers a site on the Dark Web. This site posts excerpts from extreme Alt-Right sites, along with candid photos of the children of a number of legislators. No explicit threat is made, but it seems to be an invitation to target the kids for political purposes. The girl – and her mother – both freak out. The FBI makes a political decision to turn it over to Marshal Lucas Davenport, who’s good with bizarre problems and lateral thinking. What’s implicit, but not stated, is that they want Davenport to hunt the (expletive deleted) down and kill him with minimum fuss.

As Davenport pokes into the world of the Alt-Right, a “lone psycho” begins his journey of what he considers self-actualization. It’s his destiny, he believes, to change history by killing a lawmaker’s kid. He has to learn how to kill – which he does, and it’s harder than he expected – but he’s determined, and intelligent enough to make it work.

This story moves further into politics than most of Sandford’s books, but I think he squares the circle pretty well, generally. He establishes early on that Davenport himself tends to the conservative side. And his right-wing activists are deeper and more faceted than you might expect.

I did find what I believe to be a factual error in this book. I have no personal experience here, but I’m given to understand that the way the villain acquires a couple firearms in this book is not correct. You can’t (or so I’m told) simply walk into a gun show and walk out with a couple of guns, without a background check. Maybe I missed a technical point.

I’ve seen John Sandford criticized for having only one character, and there’s some justice in that. At least in terms of the jokes they make, all his characters talk pretty much the same. But the jokes work, and they’re often politically incorrect, so I’m not complaining.

Recommended, with cautions for language, adult themes, and disturbing scenes.

‘Neon Prey, by John Sandford

Another year, another John Sandford Prey novel (this one’s number 29). In Neon Prey, hero Lucas Davenport, still living in St. Paul and now operating as a US Marshal, gets called to a bizarre crime scene in Louisiana. Cops raided a hit man’s house, and discovered a number of bodies buried in the adjacent swamp – and those bodies show signs of being butchered. This killer is a cannibal. Lucas and his two regular partners, marshals Bob Matees and Rae Givens (double gags there – “Bob and Rae” for old radio fans, plus a hat tip to Elmore Leonard) join the hunt for this guy. They trace him as he hooks up with his brother, a home invasion expert, and members of his gang in Las Vegas. The clues are few and far between, but the cannibal proves no asset to his brothers’ gang, and in the end it will be every person for themselves.

Author Sandford offers the usual pleasures of a Prey book here – the familiar, interesting hero, plus a lot of politically incorrect cop humor. But I have to say that if this had been the first book in the series I’d read, I probably wouldn’t read another. I found the ending highly unsatisfactory.

So, my verdict is this: If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll probably enjoy Neon Prey, at least up to a point. If you’re not, I really don’t recommend it.

Cautions for language, violence, and very disturbing scenes.

‘Golden Prey,’ by John Sandford

Golden Prey

If you like John Sandford’s Prey novels, you’ll probably like his latest, Golden Prey. I do, and I did.

Golden Prey is pretty much written to pattern, except that the locations and the cast of characters have been shaken up. Hero cop Lucas Davenport has left the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and joined the US Marshal’s Service. His unique status, as one who saved the life of the woman expected to be the next president (clearly modeled on Hillary Clinton), allows him, unlike other marshals, to be selective about his assignments. He holds out for “interesting” jobs, which means what he’s always done best – pursuing serial killers.

This time he goes to the American southwest to hunt a couple of stick-up men who ripped off a huge money delivery meant for a drug cartel, killing several people in the process. Meanwhile a pair of killers sent by the cartel are on the robbers’ trail as well. Their investigative methods are not subtle – they torture to death anyone they can find who knows their targets.

Lucas teams up with a female/male/black/white team of FBI agents to catch the robbers before the cartel killers can get to them, meanwhile trying to identify the cartel killers’ next targets so they can be protected. There are a lot of interesting opportunities for moral ambiguity, balancing off our sympathies as awful people are pursued by even more awful people.

Golden Prey breaks little new ground. It’s written pretty much to pattern, and if you like the pattern, you’ll probably enjoy the book. Cautions, as usual, for lots of black cop humor, foul language, and violence.

‘Extreme Prey,’ by John Sandford

He fit in the crowd like pea in a pod, he thought: the basic difference between Minnesotans and Iowans was a line on a map. Other than that, they were the same bunch, except, of course, for the physical and spiritual superiority of the Minnesota Gophers over the Iowa Hawkeyes, in all ways, and forever. Between the Hawks and the Badgers… they’d have to work that out themselves.

Another Prey book from John Sandford. Another good, entertaining story, and this time – I’m happy to report – a little lighter on the perversion and sadism.

As Extreme Prey begins, Lucas Davenport is working on remodeling his Wisconsin cabin, ogling his sexy carpenter. He’s unemployed for the moment (no great hardship for a multimillionaire), having quit his job with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Nevertheless, he still takes a call from the governor.

The governor is running for the presidential nomination (Democrat), and he’s worried about the safety of the front-runner in the race, Michaela Bowden, a former cabinet secretary. Messages he’s gotten from the lunatic fringe among his supporters have him suspicious that there’s an assassination plot aimed at Bowden. So he asks Lucas to liaise with her campaign and try to ferret out the plot, if one exists. Everybody’s in Iowa for the state fair this week, so that’s where Lucas heads in his big Mercedes SUV.

What follows is one of the more entertaining and thoughtful of the Prey stories. The plot centers around an eccentric band of rural activists, violent and crazy, but just like regular folks in alarming ways. I admired the way author Sandford defused the political implications of such a story by pretty much ignoring Republicans altogether, except for a few slighting asides. The very good and the very bad are all Democrats, and they too are not immune to criticism and satire.

As in all the Prey books, there’s plenty of low humor, and a lot of rough language. But the level of cruelty and gore is lower this time around. I enjoyed Extreme Prey a lot.

‘Gathering Prey,’ by John Sandford

They also had to deal with the question of whether Minnesotans were actually aliens. Terry brought it up: “You know what? Everybody I seen around here has big heads. You seen that?” They did, on their runs into town for food and beer. Minnesotans all had big heads. When they spotted a guy with a cowboy hat and a small head, they asked him if he was from Minnesota, and he told them no, he was from Montana.

Another John Sandford “Prey” book. Cause for rejoicing at my house. Sandford may not be the greatest creator of vivid characters in the world, or the greatest writer of dialogue, but when it comes to the art of ratcheting up the tension in a police thriller, while keeping the tone light with timely injections of cop humor, nobody comes close to him. He does what he does better than anybody.

Gathering Prey, the umpty-fifth Prey novel, starts in California, where hero Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter, Letty, is attending Stanford University. She meets a couple of buskers, Skye and Henry, and befriends them. They mention to her a man they call “Pilot” who (Skye informs her) is “the devil.”

Some time later, back home in St. Paul, Letty gets a call from Skye. She’s on her way to Minnesota from the biker rally in Sturgis, SD. Henry has disappeared, and he had been talking to Pilot, who was also there. She’s convinced Pilot kidnapped Henry.

Letty tells Lucas, and Lucas looks into it, and one thing leads to another until he’s involved in a manhunt across South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Upper Michigan, pursuing a Manson-like killing cult that’s growing increasingly unstable.

I’m impressed with the way author Sandford manages to keep an old formula fresh. The book was as lively and engrossing as any he’s written. An incident at the end indicates he plans to change things up a little in the next entry, but that’s fine with me too.

The Prey books are fantasies to some extent, and not only in terms of the male wish-fulfillment embodied in the character of Lucas Davenport, millionaire cop. Davenport is clearly a Democrat, but he lives in a Minnesota where Democrats don’t consider every criminal a misunderstood child who just needs a hug, and where men can tell women dirty jokes without losing their jobs.

But I don’t object to a little fantasy either. Keep the books coming, John Sandford. Me and my big head are waiting for them.

Cautions for language, adult themes, and some pretty appalling (but not too graphic) cruelty.