Wicked Prey

Detective Lucas Davenport is on the outs with the department for doing his job too well. It's August 2008 in St. Paul and the Republicans are in town to nominate John McCain for president. Davenport had lobbied hard for extra manpower on the streets and as payback he's been sidelined.

Which leaves him free to deal with gate crashers like the neo-Nazi who's disappeared into the city with a .50 caliber sniper rifle. Or the cop-killing hold-up gang looking for one more big score to retire on. Or his ward - soon to be adopted daughter - Letty, who is 14 and growing up to be just like her adopted Dad, smart and devious.

Letty has gotten wind of a paraplegic, meth-addicted, psychopathic pimp's plot to revenge himself on Davenport through her. show more He blames Davenport for all the ills in his misbegotten life. Rather than bother her busy Dad with it, Letty decides to take on Randy Whitcomb herself, befriending Whitcomb's stable of prostitutes - consisting of one sad-sack teenage runaway.

John Sandford excels in painting the life of a law enforcement official, from the slow times of walking the beat to the climatic shootouts, and "Wicked Prey" is no exception. The writing style is so elegant in the portrayal of the life looking for criminals, hoping for breaks, and running around in the thick of chaos. As he has proven time and time again, nobody writes a better criminal apprehension story than John Sandford. show less

The Republicans are coming to St. Paul for their convention. Throwing a big party is supposed to be fun, but crashing the party are a few hard cases the police would rather stayed away. Chief among them is a crew of professional stock-up men who've spotted several lucrative opportunities, ranging from political moneymen with briefcases full of cash, to that convention hotel with the weakness in its security system. All that's headache enough for Lucas Davenport - but what's about to hit him is even worse. A while back, a stray bullet put a pimp and petty thief named Randy Whitcomb into a wheelchair, and ever since, the man has been nursing his grudge into a full head of psychotic steam.

It's always a pleasure when an established genre writer finds a new way to energise their stories. Wicked Prey starts with three stories; an assassination plot, a planned heist and a personal vendetta to be settled with Davenport, the agent central the series. The heist thread is pure Sandford, with a merciless group staying one step of the authorities and providing the adrenaline for the novel. The robbers are well characterised and the narrative engaging, creating some real tension between them and the authorities - riveting reading. If that wasn't enough, the vendetta thread opens up space for Letty, Davenport's ward, to propel a storyline of her own, a moral dilemma, with a hard edge. Altogether these strands entwine creating a show more narrative which is a pleasure to read. Another highpoint in an already excellent series. show less

I don't even know what to say. You have Lucas's ward (Letty) trying to justifying killing someone because if she does it that means Lucas won't be involved with it. It makes zero sense and it turned me off the character. She also has a couple of disgusting comments about using people that made me dance the whole way towards she's a psychopath. Between that story-line and the other one Sandford was too all over the place in this one. I didn't care about the criminals trying to shake people down for money. I also don't want to read about the Republican National Convention across two books again. I hope this mess is wrapped up in the 20th book.

In "Wicked Prey" we have a couple of story-lines going on. We have Lucas dealing with a show more potential sharp shooter looking to take someone out at the Republican National Convention, a group of criminals that his old lover Lily is looking for, and Randy Whitcomb back again looking to get payback against Lucas. Lucas only knows about the first two issues, and is in the dark on the last one. For reasons only known to him, Sandford decides to follow the Letty as we get to see her realizing that Whitcomb is following her and going through an elaborate charade in order to see him taken down. She's worried that if Lucas finds out that Whitcomb was going to hurt or rape her, that Lucas would murder him. I maybe just shook my head at this line of thought. Only teenagers would jump from point A to point Z in an alternate universe this fast.

There is very little Lucas and what we get isn't a lot. I was happy about Del expecting his new baby since it will be nice to see if his character changes or what.

We have some of the other characters we have known for a long time like Weather, Rose Marie, Jennifer (the woman he had his first child with), etc.

But this book focuses mostly on Letty. Her justifications were crap and because of her someone was hurt and I just felt nothing but disgust for her. Due to her actions someone is beaten and raped. I felt my whole body shrink away in disgust. I hope we don't see anymore of this character in the series. Or if she is in it, she's just mentioned vaguely.

The writing was typical Sandford, but the flow was wrong. Mostly because Sandford tried to juggle three stories and told none of them well. He should have decided what he wanted to focus on. And there are plot holes galore in this one.

"Jennifer Carey was no longer to be trusted. I don’t think cops should kill people. Bullshit, Letty thought"

Yeah cause cops everywhere are totally justified for killing someone. This is talking about Lucas grabbing Whitcomb and murdering him outright. I just...sigh.

"Letty had been right about that. If he’d known Whitcomb was stalking her, or anyone else in the family, Whitcomb would have died, one way or another. The problem with a psychotic was, there is no way to deflect them, once they’ve fixed on a course. You can’t talk to them, because they’re nuts."

Irony?

The ending was a hard shrug. Definitely not one of the best Davenport stories. show less

Wicked Prey is a disappointment, although it's still much superior to the standard-issue police procedural/crime thriller.

In this 19th installment in the Lucas Davenport series, John Sandford again gives us memorable villains engaged in a complex, sophisticated plot to make out like, well, bandits at the 2008 Republican National Convention. The two ringleaders of this criminal band are especially well-drawn and compelling. In a classic Sandford configuration, the bad guys seem so on top of their game that nothing could possibly go wrong as they plan their heist, but then the exigencies and randomness of real life intervene, and things start to unravel . . . .

Unfortunately, Wicked Prey's solid main plot is larded out with a parallel show more storyline involving Davenport's ward (and soon to be adopted daughter), Letty. She's turning out to be yet another in a long line of preternaturally smart, mature kids who infest American crime fiction. I don't know if Sandford is planning to turn her into a sort of Robin to Davenport's Batman, or if he's under pressure from his publisher to work in a character that will push sales with the younger crowd, but it doesn't work. The sections of the book that involve Letty -- and they are frequent -- are turgid and implausible.

So this one's recommended, but with reservations. show less

The Republicans have come to town. The national convention has cops from neighboring states on the streets along with protesters and money men in the hotels. Money, big money, attracts thieves. And somehow, someone knows who the money men are and where they're staying. It's a political nightmare - the money men are yelling, the politicians are calling in favors, but no one wants to admit how much money is actually in play. For Davenport and the gang, tracking down the criminals gets serious fast when one of their own goes down.

A cynical view of the political machine that's a lot more believable than the pap spewed by the networks. Excellent as always.

Picked this up after I saw the TV movie for [b:Certain Prey|889785|Certain Prey (Lucas Davenport, #10)|John Sandford|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179205249s/889785.jpg|2315985] and all of the copies the library had of that title were checked out. The first quarter of the book was promising, although I thought the author did a bit of over-describing and there seemed to be a few too many plot threads.

A couple of things finally made me put it down. The plot involving his adopted daughter did not ring true. I 'get' the proposition that she's this mighty and independent young woman. But she's supposed to be only 14 and didn't even come close to acting it. In any other Minnesota family she would have been more than grounded. It also show more felt like we were almost spending more time with the multiple antagonists, rather than with Lucas Davenport's efforts to track them down. I got tired of wasting my time with those lowlifes and started skipping pages, always a bad sign. I finally threw in the towel about the middle of the book.

I may come back and try another Lucas Davenport title, perhaps [b:Certain Prey|889785|Certain Prey (Lucas Davenport, #10)|John Sandford|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179205249s/889785.jpg|2315985] (although the movie was not that great, either). Davenport does seem like a strong and smart character. show less