{"id":17380,"date":"2022-10-11T19:51:31","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T23:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=17380"},"modified":"2022-10-11T19:51:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T23:51:31","slug":"righteous-prey-by-john-sandford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=17380","title":{"rendered":"‘Righteous Prey,’ by John Sandford"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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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\u2019d get to drive them to the impound lot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been a big fan<\/strong> of John Sandford\u2019s exciting and amusing \u201cPrey\u201d 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<\/a><\/em>, he teams up (again) with his buddy Virgil Flowers, who\u2019s still in the BCA, to deal with a domestic murder ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I\u2019ve always appreciated in the series is the author\u2019s ability to set aside his personal politics (which I\u2019m pretty sure must be far to the left of mine) and present fairly balanced pictures of conservatives and liberals. And he\u2019s generally avoided controversial subjects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is less evenhanded, though I’m sure he made an effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s happening here is that a group of anonymous individuals, all of them Bitcoin billionaires, have formed a group called \u201cthe Five.\u201d Their purpose is to kill \u201ca**holes\u201d (hereinafter to be called \u201ctargets\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When one target is murdered in Minneapolis, Lucas and Virgil get involved. They\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally, Sandford is as evenhanded as usual. He does one thing that\u2019s uncharacteristic, though, if my recollection of the previous books is correct. He throws in a message this time \u2013 the evils of bump stocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I\u2019ll confess I\u2019m pretty ignorant about bump stocks. No personal experience. The sources I\u2019ve read have generally defended them, saying they really don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m skeptical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other points of interest \u2013 Virgil is now writing a novel, and he complains that he \u201conly\u201d expects an advance of $2,500.00 or so. This proves John Sandford lives in a different universe than the one I\u2019m in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a vile conservative talk show host in the story, who may be very loosely based on the late Rush Limbaugh. However, he\u2019s such a caricature that I found it hard take offense. Liberals, no doubt, will think the portrait spot on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the plus side, there\u2019s a Travis McGee reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommended, except that strong gun rights activists probably won\u2019t like it. Cautions for foul language and violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019d get to drive them … Continue reading ‘Righteous Prey,’ by John Sandford<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[1482,1720,4374,3276],"class_list":["post-17380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-john-sandford","tag-lucas-davenport","tag-righteous-prey","tag-virgil-flowers"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17381,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17380\/revisions\/17381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}