Hardmeyer - City Magazine

GOOD READS |
Wicked Prey: Lucas
Davenport is back in
best-selling author
John Sandford’s 21st Davenport
novel with Prey in the title.
“Wicked Prey” is what I would
characterize as a “candy bar”
book. Reading it is like taking a
bite of your favorite candy bar
and remembering the familiar
sweet taste of a Nut Goodie or
Butterfinger.
In short, you know what
By Ed Klecker
to expect, and the experience is pleasurable. As in all of Sandford’s
Prey novels, the setting is centered in and around Minneapolis
and St. Paul. Lucas Davenport is a tough cop assigned to the
state police to oversee law enforcement in dealing with the more
notorious criminal cases.
As such, he works closely with the governor’s office on matters
requiring some political sensitivity, sometimes a difficult task
inasmuch as Lucas is not without some personal flaws.
It’s 2008, and St. Paul is hosting the national Republican
nominating convention, a security nightmare and magnate for a
group of vicious criminals intent on preying on lobbyists and their
bags of PAC money. As the criminals begin beating and robbing
their victims, Davenport learns the identity of one of them and
sets a trap, losing one of his officers in a hotel shoot out.
The gang intends one last final job before fleeing the Twin
Cities, cleaning out the safety deposit boxes of the major hotel
hosting the convention. Compounding Davenport’s problems is a
report of a potential assassin on his way to the convention, armed
with a .50 caliber sniper rifle. Typical of most Prey novels is a
parallel story line which seems to be unrelated to the major plot
outline.
Lucas and his surgeon wife, Weather, are legal guardians to
Letty, a tough, but precocious 14-year-old girl we met as a victim
in an earlier novel. Lucas and Weather have filed papers to adopt
her.
Letty becomes aware she is being stalked by a creepy
paraplegic, psychotic pimp and the teenage prostitute he is
abusing. She discovers he had been arrested some years earlier by
Davenport and blames him for his paralysis.
She decides to take matters into her own hands, not wanting
to involve Lucas and jeopardize her adoption. As the tension
builds to the last night of the convention, a nexus develops with
the gang, the potential assassin and with the pimp. The slam-bang
conclusion will leave you waiting for the next Prey novel.
Good Reads is sponsored by:
WICKED PREY
by John Sandford
September 2009 5