Tag Archives: Letty Davenport

Fiction, Reviews

‘Toxic Prey,’ by John Sandford

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I wouldn’t go so far as to say John Sandford’s series of Prey novels is losing its momentum. Sandford is still a professional who serves up professional entertainment. But I can’t help feeling the character of Lucas Davenport has become an anachronism, and his act just doesn’t work like it used to.

The opening of Toxic Prey (Book 34 in the series) is pretty neatly done. The author introduces a character in a highly sympathetic, highly admirable light. Then we learn that he’s a psychopath planning mass murder. Dr. Lionel Scott has grown convinced that we face global disaster if we don’t radically reduce the earth’s population. And he has engineered a hybrid virus capable of doing just that. He and his little group of fanatics have a plan to spread that virus, beginning in Taos, New Mexico and from there, pretty much everywhere.

But the Department of Homeland Security has gotten a tip about it, and they send their top agent, Letty Davenport – Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter. She has recently gotten involved with an English MI-5 agent, who also comes along for the adventure. And the US Marshals send in her dad, along with his highly skilled, ethnically and sexually diverse, team.

What strikes me constantly in these later Lucas Davenport books (and in the real world he’d be long retired by now) is how awkwardly they fit our times. Aside from exciting plots, author Sandford’s great strength has always been the relationships between the cops, expressed especially in hilarious cop banter – usually obscene. But the books have kept up with the times – now about half the cops are female. And you know what – I just don’t believe the banter anymore. Guys who talk that way around women these days find themselves called on the carpet by Human Resources.

But I ought to note that he takes time out to praise John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels here. I’m always grateful for that.
And it should be noted that the bad guys in this book are on the left. You don’t see that often.

Aside from my personal quibbles, Toxic Prey is a perfectly satisfying thriller. Cautions for adult situations and language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Gathering Prey,’ by John Sandford

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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.