Customer Reviews

Mind Prey

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have read several Prey books. My favorite until now was Winter Prey, but Mind Prey may be the best one yet. They are pretty close. In Mind Prey, John Mail kidnapes a women and her two daughters. She is a Dr. who has treated John before for mental depresion. Really a nut. He carrries them to a old farm house. There he begins to rape the mother. The youngest daughter is carried away. The mother is told he carried her to a Wal-Mart and let her go, but did he???? Lucus it called in to try and find Mail and the woman and girls. The action is great. The mind games Mail and Lucus play with each other is very good. I loved the ending. Goody, goody. Through out the book Lucus is also trying to find a way to ask Weather to marry him. Does he ever do it???? A very good read if you like scary stories.

Mind Prey was the very first "Prey" book I ever read. I picked it up in an airport and was instantly hooked. John Sandford has the rare ability to build "real" characters that are flawed but real - cruel but interesting - attractive but not cheesy.
For those of us with kids - this particular book is savage! It starts with a guy fishing on a lake... and right then your nerves will start to fray - you know that something BAD is going to happen.

Step in Lucas Davenport - Part detective, part game designer, part animal. This guy is about the best detective I have seen portrayed. He isn't Sherlock Holmes and He isn't Mike Hammer, but he is definitely a bit of both.

One last thing - if you read one - be prepared to buy the rest!

I am in the process of reading #8 of 10 (so far) of the "Prey" series. I re-read the first 3 and have continued through the entire series. Mind Prey is #7 and by far the best yet. This story kept me locked in from the first pages. It has the hidden secrets, the "thing" Lucas Davenport just can't get ahold of, empathy for the victims, and surprises until the very end. Instead of "burning out" on the saga, I eagerly start the next book. WOW! What a storyteller is John Sandford!

We immediately know who the villain of this story is (in Winter Prey we had no idea), so the focus is on an intense series of police procedural moves--eventually reckless ones--in a desperate full court press to pin down the kidnapper. He really is a smart fellow, who glides invisibly around the police traps, much as his chapters slide past the cops'. One of the scariest things about Sandford's stories is how often the victims aren't doing anything stupid, just what you or I'd do, like picking up your kids after school. Unusually, there are three views of the crime in this story: the kidnapper's, Chief Davenport's, and, for once, the victims'--who aren't immediately killed off. Too, the story ranges all over the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, with lots of fresh air chases of the elusive madman. Sandford misses a rare trick by not pushing, after setting up, the babbling psychotherapist, Dr. Girdler, as another suspect in collusion with the kidnapper. Davenport's romantic entaglements are much subdued: he's finally gotten serious with one woman. The use of lucky coincidences, or intuitions on Davenport's part, is more obvious than usual, but powers the bombshell twists and revelations that mean it's awfully hard to put this story down before it's time to get up for work again. I don't usually read a series without taking a break for something different, but that's less the case with Sandford; glad I didn't discover him until he already had several books out: it's so hard waiting a year for the next.

Lucas Davenport faces a new challenge in Mind Prey. He is not hunting a killer through clues left at a murder scene, but instead is trying to find a kidnapped family, who may still be alive.

Davenport's fame helps him out because the killer cannot help but call him and challenge him to a duel of wits. Lucas and his team must unravel clues given by the kidnapper, as well as decide who would profit the most from the families death.

If you have read the other Prey books, you will be happy to know that Lucas' love life is still cruising along in one-woman gear. I would also add a warning that, although Sandford does not describe the attacks in detail, the woman who is kidnapped is repeatedly raped and beaten. If that sort of thing disturbs you, you may want to skip this book.

Read this book, and keep reading the Prey series.

I started out with the book "Night Prey". My friendand I were in school, when she told me to read this book when she wasdone. I read it within 36 hours, it was such a page-turner. I then found out that this book was just one in a series of "prey" books by John Sandford. I've read almost all of them, and I'm planning on buying "Certain Prey" from amazon.com soon. The best series that there is. John Sandford is definately my favorite author! He's created such a likable character in Lucas Davenport, and he definately knows how to add in unsuspecting twists and turns to every novel. If you like James Patterson's novels, you'll definately enjoy anything written by John Sandford.

What a book! What a writer! Just when I think that I could be a writer myself, an author like this comes along. "Mind Prey" is brilliant, it kept me up all night! Sanford is in the league of Lehane & Pottinger, I will definately be getting the rest of the series.

The characters are believable, the plot is great, the ending is sensational! I have read many many crime/suspense fiction and was expecting this to be another who-done-it with a double agent in the police force, as there usually is. But, this novel kept me hooked right until the end. I especially enjoyed the victim's perspective as that is rarely seen in crime fiction.

If you are looking for a great book to read and are tired of the usual ones, you'll find it with Mind Prey!

Lucas Davenport is a street wise, smart cop. Intelligent, dogged, sometimes lucky, sometimes not, but always believable. He is the brilliant fictional creation of John Sandford, who has written more than a dozen "Prey" novels featuring Davenport.

Sandford's characters and plots are believable and move swiftly. He doesn't rely on fortunate miracles, but rather dogged police work with an occasional bit of luck.

In "Mind Prey" a psychiatrist and her daughter are kidnapped by a psychopath with a penchant for role-playing games. Davenport as it happens is a creator of such simulation games.

The chase becomes a gruesome game as the murderer taunts Davenport and leads him on.

A great police thriller.

Jerry

The third book ive read in the Prey series, and i loved it. None of them have disappointed me. Love the way Villian John Mail and Lucas Davenport kind of play games with eachother and have a battle of wits with eachother. Davenport using witty ideas to find where he is, lure him into traps, while Mail, mentally ill but very intelligent, uses his brain to dodge Davenports traps and tricks, but to send Davenport and his men into booby-traps of his own. The suspense was thrilling. I loved the irony of Davenport having fun with Mail, claustrophobic, in the end, after Mail got to have all the fun leading Davenport around through most of the book. I finished in three days only because school wasted my time, but every chance i could get my nose was buried in it. For a good thrill i would recommend this or any Sanford book in the Prey series.

I would rate Mind Prey as on par with Winter Prey as being the best in the series. In this installment, brilliant psychopath John Mail kidnaps his former psychiatrist and her two young daughters as vengeance for her part in having him committed to a mental hospital years before. Lucas Davenport is back and hot on Mail's trail. Mail, a gamer who knows of Lucas' history designing computer games, starts toying with his pursuer by leaving obscure clues as to his location.

With the most original plot of all the "Prey" novels (as well as the most frightening and unpredictable villain), if you are new to the Prey series and you don't care about going in order, read this one before you even think about the others.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was that sometimes Sandford would create completely unnecessary characters and make it seem like their purpose in the story was meaningful, but then you'd find out that it wasn't (like Ice, one of the programmers at Davenport Simulations).