Silent Prey by John Sandford is one of a series of books involving the character Lucas Davenport, a super detective in Minnesota. He used to be with the Minneapolis Police Department but is between police jobs in this story. He has made a small fortune as a computer game designer where he specializes in police simulations. In later books he will be the head of a new Minnesota State Government Office that apprehends criminals. He drives a Porsche and lives in a neat house on a scenic bluff in St Paul looking over the Mississippi river toward Minneapolis. Indeed with some driving directions given in this book I was able to use Google Earth to find the exact neighborhood and some typical homes where Davenport might live. I could almost stand going back to Minnesota to live in a place like that. Lucas is famous as a skirt chaser. One of the characters in this story, Lily, a New York City police detective, is an old flame from a previous story. Lucas has had some complications arise from his womanizing. In an earlier book he was chasing a pretty blond TV anchor lady until she got pregnant. Then she decided she didn't want to raise her daughter anywhere near the influence of Lucas Davenport. In a later story he gets involved with a pretty blond (of course) surgeon at the University of Minnesota Hospitals and is heading toward matrimony until a bad guy holding her hostage gets his head popped by a sniper and she turns her disgust at being showered close range with bloody brains on Lucas.
This story is unusual for Sandford because it takes place mostly in New York City where Lucas goes to help catch a killer he already caught once in Minneapolis. The story is complicated by the fact that there seems to be a secret group of vigilante police killing bad guys. Lucas meets a new girl, a cop named "Fell", who might be one of the bad cops. She is a tough cop like Lucas and after a while the two tough cops find common ground. The action is slow at times, a common characteristic of Sandford's books but can get so fast and busy that you have to re-read the last chapter or two. The book ends suddenly and in a way I found unsettling. That does not mean I don't like it. Some things in life are complicated. I would have liked to have seen more development of Lucas' relationship with Fell after they stop the bad guy. Sandford knows how to write a good cop book. It still gets a solid four stars. It is good entertainment.
If you like this, you will probably like the approximately 20 other "Prey" books featuring Lucas Davenport. For a change of pace (slowing down), he also has several books featuring detective Virgil Flowers and for faster pace, a few books featuring the young computer whiz kid named "Kidd" ( a Viet Nam Vet). People get murdered at frequent intervals in this book but progress toward locating the killer comes in spurts. Like any series novel, it helps to learn the series in proper order. This comes in the middle of the series. Amazon.com gives plenty of help in sorting out the order of the series. Do a search on John Sandford. Most people will still enjoy this story as a stand-alone introduction to the series.
Sherry W. Luhman
Tom Goodrick