Mind Prey (Lucas Davenport #7)

… and this was an excellent story, but by the last 50 pages I was skimming, JUST KILL THE GUY! The author is sometimes too clever, and too lose with his time frames for his own good. The bad guys raping, driving, theres an FBI MANHUNT, the bad guys out in the middle of it, slipping past, getting away, getting away, then the cops are all going to bed, then the subplot of who in the family is tipping the bad guy off, then the kidnapped womans partner is arranging the whole thing to get all the money, then the kid napped women are ENDLESSLY worrying a nail out of the wall, then the bad guy is defying THOUSANDS of cops, FBI, EVERYONE! Then the ex-husbands delivering ransom money but its a trap but the lead cop who also designs GAMES has gamers worked no computers and warrants arent coming and the FBI IS EVERYWHERE but the bad guy, in at least seven different places simultaneously is raping and escaping and planting traps and the devious partner of the kidnapped women is threatening to SUE EVERYONE, Then its a rush to save the women, but the blackmailer and the mole in the family and the vengeful partner and the cops are taking naps, and Davenport trying to decide to ask his woman to marry him, then the ENTIRE FBI IS OUT but the bad guy is in a house, in a car, getting away to kill the women then the women work on the nail… ONE HUNDRED PAGES that should have taken FIVE. Then the bad guys sort of dead or shot himself and the women are free BUT THERES STILL FIFTY PAGES of the family mole and the blackmailer and the devious partner….

This is one of the Prey series I had missed. It was written somewhere around 1995 and has some descriptions in its context which are dated and a little amusing today.

That said, John Sandford had written another Lucas Davenport winner here. Theres suspense, action, drama, twists and surprises to keep any reader entertained. Lucas is his always his likeable self as the lead protagonist chasing a mentally deranged antagonist who has kidnapped a mother and her two daughters to avenge his own twisted feelings regarding previous psychological treatment.
There are interpersonal relationships between the kidnapped woman, her business partner, and her family.

The book is difficult to put down. The ending, itself is stellar, going on for a multitude of pages and being very descriptive and so well thought out by Mr. Sandford. Its really difficult to miss with this series. This is yet another winner among many.

I’ve read almost all of them now. And this one, one of the best. I’m glad I missed the movie. I think it might have ruined it. Nothing against Eriq LaSalle, but as Lucas Davenport?! Please! Lucas’s physical description is part of him. I love all his people. And they shine in this one.

I am an ardent John Sandford fan. I recently purchased and read the complete Prey series and then the complete Flowers series in order, and I’m only sorry I’ll have to wait for the next book in both series. Sandford is a novelist with the rare ability to carry over characters and plot elements with complete believabiity while allowing both to develop in interesting, unexpected but natural ways – the only other “serial” novelist who does this nearly as well is Anthony Trollope, and he avoids murders. I re-read these books with pleasure as great or greater than the first reading because the fast-paced narrative and unexpected plot developments pulls you to read fast the first time; the second or third you can pay attention to atmosphere (he’s great on significant landscape detail), character growth, and situation development. Sandford writes like a real novelist, not like someone trying to impress academia with his literary exclusivity.

This was one of the development “Prey Books” that I missed along the way. This was the 19th book I read in this series. It was nice reading where some of these characters were still alive and very active in this plot while they had died or been killed in later stories. Also this is the key book in Lucas’ life where he proposes to Weather who becomes his wife for several books to the present time. The running gag is that he carries the engagement ring around in his pocket through this story, not finding the “right time” to pop the question until the very end after he drags it through the mud in his pocket while trying to catch the bad guy.

The story deals with a mentally ill patient who escapes surveillance by faking his own death as a jumper from a tall bridge. Then he kidnaps the pretty young psychiatrist who treated him for many years as a troubled teenager. She has two daughters, and, he takes them too. He holds them in the root cellar of a remote farm south of St Paul. He repeatedly rapes the psychiatrist violently and threatens the girls. He takes the youngest girl and dumps her in a deep cystern, claiming to her mother that he released her in a mall. She is found near the end.

AS in many of these mysteries, Lucas spends half the story trying figure out who the bad guy is even though the bad guy is talking to him on a cell phone much of the time. It is one of the best of the “Prey” series, giving a firm foundation to the “prey” classification for these stories about Lucas Davenport, the Minneapolis cop.

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