John Sandford (1) (1944–)

Cliffhanger Prey
A review of the Penguin Audio audiobook (March 25, 2025) narrated by [author:Robert Petkoff|2889695] and released simultaneously with the G.P. Putnam's Sons hardcover & eBook.

Can a book be 5-stars and still earn an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert™? If the book is Lethal Prey, then yes it can!

For its police procedural details, for its cop banter, for the return of both U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport and Minnesota BCA Agent Virgil Flowers, for its family scenes, for its subplot of show more Flowers fretting about his budding novelist career and finally for its diabolical serial killer villain, this was the best Prey in years.

But as the minutes counted down on the audio I kept thinking how can Sandford possibly wrap this up in the time remaining. And the answer is that he doesn't. There is that sense of deflation when you realize you will have to wait a year or more to find out how it all plays out.

Sandford has of course done this before, with [book:Certain Prey|37302] (Lucas Davenport #10 - 1999) and then its delayed follow-up [book:Mortal Prey|85310] (Lucas Davenport #13 - 2002). Still at this stage in his career it was surprising that the fans had to be baited again. But it is still a 5-star read up until the final few seconds 😅. If that is a spoiler, then sorry about that!

Soundtrack
"They had the satellite radio station tuned to an Americana station playing low and Ray Wylie Hubbard came on singing Drunken Poet's Dream. Virgil turned up the sound and sang along for a couple of verses in a grainy baritone." show less

There seems to be considerable debate as to whether discussing the identity of the killer in this novel constitutes the spoiling of a previous entry in the series. I’ve come down on the side that it is not--so if you personally have any doubt, please exit now with my 5-Star rating and hearty recommendation because . . .
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. . . I have two reasons for going forward. First of all, both her assumed identity and real name are the focus of the first chapter, so any previously issued blurb, show more synopsis and/or review would almost certainly contain the same information. Secondly, the author has publicly stated that four of his most popular books with fans are the pair featuring Michael Bekker and the two featuring Clara Rinker, a clear enough statement that neither was killed during their initial appearance. Mortal Prey spotlights the latter foe in her second encounter with Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport.

Which is just as well, as I have no great fondness for Bekker in either of his appearances, and therefore no real insight. Clara Rinker is a completely different matter, and this vital difference allows me to state with confidence what I consider to be the secret of her wide-ranging appeal. We like her. It’s that simple. She is a stone cold killer. She kills without hesitation or remorse. And we still like her. A lot.

In Certain Prey, her debut, Sandford quietly established our affection for Clara by revealing the traumatic and abuse-ridden childhood of her past and juxtaposing it against two major story elements in the present. The first of these was the level-headed, well-adjusted adult she somehow survived to become, in spite of the fact that she's a professional killer. The second contrast was Davenport himself, the supposed good guy, who commits some ethically questionable and fairly ruthless acts in the pursuit of Clara and her accomplice. Even Davenport--when he meets Clara before learning who she is--came away really liking her. (She was aware of who he was, by the way; she was trying to discover how close he was getting.)

Sandford could not, however, use any of this as a springboard in Clara’s return. Recaps bring no emotional impact. He could sprinkle it in later to add texture but Sandford needed a different means to get the readers on Clara’s side immediately. He chose to make her a victim again. Retired, hiding in Mexico, in love and newly pregnant, an assassin’s bullet robs her of everything but her life. Righteous anger takes her to St. Louis seeking revenge for her losses and freedom from her past. The FBI getting word of her general location brings Davenport down from Minneapolis to help in the search. The rematch is set.

The novel is mostly about Clara. We meet friends and acquaintances, rivals and enemies. We also receive more glimpses into her past with Davenport’s visit to her home town. She is inventive in how she eliminates her various targets, sometimes under the nose of the FBI. It forces Davenport to be just as imaginative in his pursuit. And once she realizes he’s on the scene, there is more interaction between the two of them. Over the phone, of course; at her instigation. And more than once. These are interesting conversations and readers are left to wonder just how much of Davenport’s affection and respect is real and how much is an attempt to keep her talking while trying to trace her location. Both characters had been through a lot since their first meeting years ago, and we can never be completely sure of their true feelings, at least not until the conclusion. But that’s the point. It keeps us turning the pages.

Mortal Prey contains more than a few multi-layered reasons to keep turning pages. It stands among the best John Sandford has to offer. And that’s often as good as it gets. show less

I really enjoy John Sandford's Lucas Davenport series. Virgil Flowers was a supporting character in that series, but is now the lead in his own set of books. I really like Lucas, but have to say that 'that f****** Flowers' is my fave! The 10th (and latest) Flowers book is Deep Freeze.

Virgil is happily enjoying some time off when he's called back in and sent to Trippton, Minnesota - remember that murderous school board? Well, there's another dead body in town - this one's frozen. And the show more suspects are many - everything points to one of the Trippton graduating class of twenty years ago. Turns out they've got a reunion planned....Now, we the reader know who the culprit is. But the body isn't where he left it. So the killer is just as confused. Knowing what we believe to be the whodunit in no way detracts from being on the case with Virgil. My interest was held right through to the end. And there's one more thing his superiors want him to look into while he's in Trippton. Some locals are adding some, well, 'inappropriate' sound chips to Barbie dolls. Mattel would like them to 'cease and desist.'

Oh, Sandford's plotting is always great. In Virgil's cases, nothing is straight forward or 'normal'. And that's a huge part of the appeal of this series. But the real draw is of course Virgil. With his blond surfer boy looks, his laconic, down homey charm, his sense of humour and ability to fit right in with the locals, Virgil is not what you would expect of an Minnesota BCA Agent. The situations and dialogue assigns to Virgil are laugh out loud funny. One of the best supporting characters takes a larger role this time out. Johnson Johnson (nope, that's not a typo, that's his name) lives in the Trippton area, so he adds himself to the investigation. The banter between these two is great fun.

Virgil's personal life is also a step left of center. Sandford has moved things along in each new entry in the series. There's a fairly large development in Deep Freeze - I will be curious to see what the next book brings. Deep Freeze is another great entry in this entertaining series show less

As the second book in the Virgil Flowers series, “Heat Lightning” is marginally better than the first (“Dark of the Moon”), but is marred by repetition of some of its predecessor’s themes and flaws.

Protagonist Virgil exhibits the same distinctive features. He’s a 30-something, 3-time marital failure who dresses in rock band T shirts, treats women as sex objects, and each night be goes to bed and “thinks about God”. (In Chapter 2 Virgil reveals: “I don’t believe God cares show more what we do. Everything is equally relevant and irrelevant… A religion is nothing more than a political party organized around some guy’s moral views… like conventional political parties are organized around some guy’s economic views.” Apparently Virgil’s daily contemplation has brought him no deeper than the vague musings of a high school sophomore. (See note #1 below for more of the same.)

The protagonist’s approach to women is equally limited. Page 10 delivers this treat: “On this hot, close night, Virgil’s consideration of the wonders of the universe were discomfited by the proximity of Janey Small’s naked ass, which in Virgil’s opinion, was one of the wonders of the universe. Like a planet. A small hot planet like Mercury, pulling you both with its heat and with its gravity.” Seriously? This writer compares a woman's paired buttocks to the planet, Mercury?? Surely such passages rank as among the worst in modern fiction. But stiff competition is not far away (page 14): In college, he’d “picked up on the fact that the slender, brown-haired, big boobed literature students, the ones who turned his crank, didn’t give a rats ass about baseball… but could tell you anything you wanted to know about Jean-Paul Sartre or those other French guys. Derrida. Foucault. Whatever.” Yes. Whatever.

So, the plot. As in “Dark of the Moon,” (a) a serial killer is on the loose in small-town Minnesota; (b) the killer murders his victims in ritualistic fashion; (c) the murders relate to some mysterious events of decades past; and (d) who is doing the killing is pretty obvious to the reader, though not to Virgil and his fellow investigators. Details of the formula differ a bit from the previous book. The killer(s) leave each body at a war memorial and (for reasons never explained) stick a lemon in its mouth. In “Dark of the Moon” the victims had their eyes shot out, and were propped up facing east – again for unexplained reasons. In any case, Virgil, led by his genitalia rather than his brain becomes easily-manipulated as a tool of the perpetrators, thereby becoming an unwitting accomplice to the murders. Of course, who can blame him. The woman in question has a “beautiful” “ass” (sic). Whether the motive for the murders seems plausible is a matter of opinion. In “Heat Lightning,” a crack team of Vietnamese assassins seeks to gain revenge for a massacre of a family back in the 1970s during the war– and not satisfied with killing the man responsible, seek to kill all of his comrades in arms. Virgil and his fellow cops don’t figure it all out until only one of the six men is left. At the end, Virgil gets a phone call from Hanoi; it’s Mai, the Vietnamese assassin; and she offers to sleep with him again if he’s ever in Vietnam. Good; it’s nice to know there’s no hard feelings.

note 1: ”God didn’t have a plan, Virgil believed. God had his limits, and one of them was, he didn’t always know what would happen; or if he did know, he didn’t care; or if he cared, he was constrained by his own logic and couldn’t do anything about death and destruction.” Wow. deep. show less