Broken Prey

Wow. This book rocked it from beginning to end. Great character development for some of the characters I have been reading about for 16 books. I also really loved the idea of Lucas being home alone while dealing with Weather, the kids, and the housekeeper being in London for the summer. It definitely shows us a changed Lucas. I was worried here and there we would see some terrible backsliding with regards to Lucas being happily married, but Sandford doesn't go there. I was also really happy with the overall story being about Lucas and company realizing they are dealing with a serial killer. The why behind the killings is astounding though and the final reveals blew me away, I didn't see any of the events coming. I also loved that show more Sandford did a bait and switch in this one too.

"Broken Prey" has Lucas still assisting Sloan with a particularly gruesome murder. A young woman is found hung and disemboweled. When another murder is found with a father and son, all clues point to one man being behind this. Lucas, Sloan, and the rest of the police forces are racing to find the killer before they strike again. Through a roundabout way we have Lucas and Sloan starting to poke into the ins and outs of a mental institution as well. Lucas's long-time friend Elle assists on this one as a profiler, and I found her insights very good.

We have Lucas dealing with the family being gone and him realizing he was reveling in being messy, before he got tired of it. Weather also got him an IPOD as a gift along with money towards him buying songs (Oh IPODs...) and is trying to carve out a list of top 100 songs. The ins and outs of Lucas going through artists and why they suck along with the other cops and Sloane was hilarious. There is a weird callback to this list at the end of the story and Sandford even lists his top 100 songs too.

We also have Lucas touching upon the depression that came on before that he had in prior books. Am glad that Sandford touches upon depression and via a character even says that taking drugs to help you through it, isn't a bad thing. We have hints that Sloan is going through a depression because he can't take seeing any more dead bodies and tracking down the men and women who do this to other people.

I loved the development of Sloan in this one. He really is a brilliant investigator, and his dreams of opening a bar seemed like a pipe dream at times.

We per usual get into a POV of the bad guy...and that's all I am going to say about it. Sandford delivers a wonderful surprise I didn't see coming and I hope the next book matches this with just letting things unravel for both us and Lucas at the same time.

The writing was top-notch and at times quite poetic. Sandford provides more context and history with different locations around Minneapolis. The flow was really good too and I was just in shock and horror at the end of the book because you don't know how things are going to turn out. I read as fast as I could and felt like the words needed to be even faster.

The ending was really good and I have to say also sad in a way. We are left with some questions about things and some very good CYA maneuvers in the end. show less

This is a wild one. Sandford somehow makes this very twisty, very improbable story work very, very well. This is the perfect thriller for a lazy vacation or at least for the weekend, because it's the kind that keeps you stuck to your chair until it's done.

The first time I read this I was a bit upset that Sandford didn't know how to incorporate Letty better. She was such a good character and here she's shoved off to London and never says a word. However on the reread, I liked the plot much better and enjoyed Millie and her sex life, and the intracies of this 15th (?) installation in the prey series.

I love this series and have just gone through a rereading binge of them. This is one of the better ones in terms of mysteries, its the one that ends up in the mental institution and has the riff of Lucas chosing the top 100 rock songs of all times, and all the cops opinions of it. I liked this one, it's a reread and a keeper. A

A long-running series is a difficult thing. How much character and background can you add to please new readers but not annoy devotees at the same time? Lately it seems that he’s aiming to please the latter and as one I think it works. Newcomers to the series will find things a bit shallow, but that’s ok with me. There’s a lot of history with the characters and you just have to read the other 16 books or whatever in order to find out what it is. He’s not going to repeat these details in every novel because he knows that annoys the loyal reader. Robert Crais takes this approach as well and I appreciate it.

Thankfully Weather and the brats are shipped out of the country for this one. I think Sandford knows how much they weaken show more Davenport, but now that he’s created them he’s shy of killing them off. Doing so would probably kill Davenport anyway, so it’s a compromise to move them physically apart from each other. It worked in Naked Prey, too.

In this one, Sloan seems to be the one suffering the most. Back a few books, we had Davenport in the grips of clinical depression and now Sloan seems to be following. He keeps telling Lucas that he is going to quit. Lucas doesn’t want him to, but is encouraged by others to encourage Sloan in this plan; to buy a bar and get out of the crime business.

This one has a lot of detective work as usual. There are red herrings and a lot of violence which is also normal. The solution is implausible, which is not always the case with Sandford, but hell, this is fiction. What we want is compelling and readable and that's just what we get. show less

There seems to be a new rule in American crime fiction that all perps have to be really evil, nothing subtle or conflicting. It’s not enough to murder someone, they have to murder in multiples, and if that weren’t enough, they must mutilate the body too, and to top it off, brag about it to the cops. It’s as if we can’t root for the cops if the perp is your ordinary killer. These are the antithesis of Simenon, Mankell, and many other very good writers who display their talent through an examination of the subtleties of crime.

In Broken Prey, another in the Lucas Davenport series, the cop who has millions from designing a computer game but just loves to go after bad guys in his Porsche, there is another portrayal of crime in its show more most excruciating detail. Is it really necessary that we must participate in the sordid details of the butchery of victims? Frankly, it turns me off and makes me wonder about Mr. Sandford and perhaps those who enjoy reading that stuff. What ever happened to the imagination which can be gory enough.

OK, now that I have that off my chest, the Prey series still remains pretty decent in its investigatory plots if wildly unrealistic. Talk to any cop and see if any of them recognize themselves in these stories. Never happen. Tearing around town in a luxury car and truck and rarely doing any paperwork. The Lone Wolf as superhero while pretending to be sensitive in his girlfriend relationships, one of whom is a nun-psychologist for God’s sake. Hmm, slipped back on my chest, didn’t I.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit I enjoy listening to these books especially when read by Richard Ferrone. They do make satisfying listening while mowing or driving (as long as my wife or anyone under 21 isn’t around.) show less

This was definitely not my first read of John Sandford's "Broken Prey" and I had forgotten just how good a book this was. I was distracted by the rock-n-roll list. I was distracted by the love-making couple. I thought the Serb was the killer. Where did he fit in? But what about the accent? How could Pope be the killer? The book dragged a bit in the first third, but then it was unstoppable.

Lucas Davenport, the star of a myriad of Sandford's 'Prey' novels returns once more to hunt down a serial killer. It's a standalone book, only using the series as a backdrop and little else. About 200 pages in I had an inkling to who was killer (usually the Prey novels follow a the killer in detail, building suspense via other methods). Hah! How wrong was I. As the story escalates this routine crime novel goes in to overdrive and the climax is absolute chaos. It's a real page-turner, full of suspense, great characters, emotion, action scenes which are brilliantly written... and of course one of the best plots I had read in a crime book. This is Sandford at his finest - miss it at your own peril.