Naked Prey [Hardcover]

John Sandford (Author)

Book Description

Series: Prey | Publication Date: May 12, 2003

Lucas Davenport Þnds some changes-and some nasty surprises-in store, in the chilling new novel by the number-one-bestselling author.

In Naked Prey, John Sandford puts Lucas Davenport through some changes. His old boss, Rose Marie Roux, has moved up to the state level and taken Lucas with her, creating a special troubleshooter job for him for the cases that are too complicated or politically touchy for others to handle. In addition, Lucas is now married and a new father, both of which are fine with him: he doesn't mind being a family man. But he is a little worried. For every bit of peace you get, you have to pay-and he's waiting for the bill.

It comes in the form of two people found hanging from a tree in the woods of northern Minnesota. What makes it particularly sensitive is that the bodies are of a black man and a white woman, and they're naked. "Lynching" is the word that everybody's trying not to say-but, as Lucas begins to discover, in fact the murders are not what they appear to be, and they are not the end of the story. There is worse to come-much, much worse.

Filled with the rich characterization and exceptional drama that are his hallmarks, this is Sandford's most suspenseful novel yet.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When twelve-year-old muskrat trapper Letty West stumbles on the naked bodies of Jane Warr and Deon Cash, deep in the snowy woods of northern Minnesota, it's more than another bizarre episode in her already unusual life, as Lucas Davenport discovers in this new outing in Sandford's popular series featuring the midwestern lawman who moonlights as a computer game designer. Lucas has a new wife, a new baby, and a new job as a political troubleshooter for his old boss Rose Marie Roux, but the blunt-spoken Davenport's instructions to hush the racially charged implications of what looks suspiciously like a lynching won't deter him from whomever left Warr and Cash twisting in the wind. The well-peopled plot, involving a hot car ring, an ex-nun who smuggles cancer drugs over the Canadian border, and the usual internecine wranglings between the FBI, the local cops, and Davenport, races to a satisfying denouement, but this time it's a little girl with a difficult past and an uncertain future who lingers in the reader's mind. Fortunately, Sandford comes up with an ending that makes it all but certain that his fans will meet her again. Meanwhile, all the author's usual trademarks are on display--excellent writing, an interesting scenario, and terrific pacing. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Sandford gets back to basics in this stellar 14th installment of his hugely popular Prey series, focusing on the long-standing duo of Davenport and Capslock. As the novel begins, the indomitable Lucas Davenport (now happily married, a contented father and bored out of his mind) is slogging through the northern tundra of Broderick, Minn., to inspect the naked dangling corpses of a white woman and black man ("They were frozen. Like Popsicles.") that have shocked the locals as well as Minnesota's governor with the ugly specter of a lynching. Davenport, now more or less a free agent for the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension ("I kick people's asses"), is unleashed by the governor, giving Davenport and his scruffy sidekick, Del Capslock, a chance to escape their square city lives and catch the villain(s) while staving off the media vultures, Sandford's trademark subplot. As in previous novels, the original crime (rendered in a truly horrific opening sequence) is merely the gateway to a deeper, more insidious criminal enterprise, this one an international labyrinth of stolen cars, drugs, gambling and kidnapping. Some truly vicious familial machinations in the small town contrast well with Davenport's staid and stable home life. Another pleasant surprise is the precocious Letty West, whose awakening teenage sensibilities make an impression on Davenport. Sandford's usual background details (readers will learn how to run a muskrat trapline and how an Indian casino operates) are deftly woven into the fabric. This latest installment in a series now a decade and a half old is vintage Sandford.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1ST edition (May 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399150439
• ISBN-13: 978-0399150432
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (118 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Sandford was born John Camp on February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He attended the public schools in Cedar Rapids, graduating from Washington High School in 1962. He then spent four years at the University of Iowa, graduating with a bachelor's degree in American Studies in 1966. In 1966, he married Susan Lee Jones of Cedar Rapids, a fellow student at the University of Iowa. He was in the U.S. Army from 1966-68, worked as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian from 1968-1970, and went back to the University of Iowa from 1970-1971, where he received a master's degree in journalism. He was a reporter for The Miami Herald from 1971-78, and then a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press from 1978-1990; in 1980, he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and he won the Pulitzer in 1986 for a series of stories about a midwestern farm crisis. From 1990 to the present he has written thriller novels. He's also the author of two non-fiction books, one on plastic surgery and one on art. He is the principal financial backer of a major archaeological project in the Jordan Valley of Israel, with a website at www.rehov.org. In addition to archaeology, he is deeply interested in art (painting) and photography. He both hunts and fishes. He has two children, Roswell and Emily, and one grandson, Benjamin. His wife, Susan, died of metastasized breast cancer in May, 2007, and is greatly missed.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars John Sandford continues to ply his trade...., June 4, 2003

By 

L. Quido "quidrock" (Tampa, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Naked Prey (Hardcover)

with another entry in his fine "Prey" series, a group of books centered on Lucas Davenport, "the richest cop in Minnesota" (rich because he also designs video games).

Sandford set the stage for change at the conclusion of his last book, letting the reader percolate on what would be the differences in Lucas when he becomes an active father, and when he leaves the police department for a quasi-bureaucratic governmental position in a new state department headed by his old boss, Rose Marie Roux. Wisely, although Sandford went forward with these changes, the impact was streamlined by having 90% of the book's action happen in rural northern Minnesota, in the fictional small town of Broderick. Family man Lucas still has his best sidekick, Del, gainfully employed with him -- and married or not, he still can spot and appreciate a great looking woman. Some things never change!

The first two murders may be motivated by racial hatred - one victim is black, and his significant other is white...they are found brutally slain and hanging from a barren tree in the frosty Minnesota winter. There's so much odd and unusual "stuff" going on in Broderick, it's difficult for Lucas & Del to pin down the any information about the murders, and the killings continue.

Sandford manages to deftly interweave his social viewpoints -- his lack of respect for the media, his vague unsettlement with the way that federal, state and local authorities sometimes impede each other to solve a case that has generated media attention, and most importantly, his support of a little known grass roots campaign that is quietly smuggling prescription drugs from Canada to US patients who need and can't afford them.
Unlike many other writers of this genre, Sandford can keep both his tale of the crime and his social commentary moving in the same direction -- one does not eclipse or slow down the other.

The book is also notable in that it provides a lot of insight into tribal casinos...a staple of the Minnesota scenery in the last decade. Tribal casinos have changed rural Minnesota in many ways, and Sandford captures this contrast of big city activity with the rural tundra.

The prize of the novel, as many readers have commented, is new character Letty West, who will doubtless appear in future instalments. A precocious 12-year old, Letty's like many rural kids that come from dysfunctional single parent families....in the cities, kids from these homes tend to run with gangs...in the country, they tend to be loners, with old souls. Letty is such a character, and she's the best addition to the series in a long time.

This may not be the finest of Sandford's series, but its darn close! Don't wait for the paperback!

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fine police procedural, May 12, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Naked Prey (Hardcover)

A lot has changed for Lucas Davenport in the last year. He married the love of his life Weather and they have an infant son and have moved into a new home with a separate apartment for the nanny/housekeeper. Rose Marie Roux is still Lucas's boss but she is now the Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner and Lucas reports directly to her and the governor as the Director in the Office of Regional Studies which is a part of The Bureau of Criminal Apprehensions.

Lucas gets the police cases that the local departments are not equipped to deal with or are political hot potatoes. His latest case involves a white woman and a black man hung by a rope to a tree and strangled to death. Lucas doesn't take long to identify the killer but when he goes to arrest him, he finds someone already murdered the perpetrator and his wife. Lucas returns to the small Northern Minnesota town of Broderick to find another killer but he doesn't realize that the small bucolic town is a cesspool of crime and corruption, a place where his homicide is interrelated to a series of other felonious acts.

There is nobody who writes a police procedural better than John Sandford. His plots are so complex that readers find themselves unable to put the book down until the last page is turned and all the loose ends are sewn up. NAKED PREY is one of the best novels in the series because the hero has undergone some radical changes both in his personal and professional life and that keeps the series fresh. This is a must read for fans of cop thrillers.

Harriet Klausner

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Undoubtedly, Sandford's Best Lucas Davenport Novel, May 29, 2003

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Naked Prey (Hardcover)

NAKED PREY is the thirteenth of John Sandford's Lucas Davenport mysteries, the thirteenth in thirteen years actually. The series has had its ups and, around WINTER PREY or NIGHT PREY, downs, but for the most part, Sandford has written consistently tight, suspenseful thrillers about the Minnesota police investigator who styles himself quite accurately as the state's richest cop. Nothing that has come before, however, will prepare Sandford's and Davenport's former and current fans for NAKED PREY.

NAKED PREY is far and away Sandford's best, a novel that succeeds on so many levels that it will leave readers shaking their heads in wonder. It begins and ends with brutal murders --- the first is a puzzle and the last is a given, but both are ultimately satisfying. What occurs in between --- the plotting, the characterization, the pacing --- will make you wish that NAKED PREY was twice as long.

NAKED PREY finds Davenport comfortably ensconced in a position known as "Director --- Office of Regional Studies," which in turn is part of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Davenport reports directly to his old boss, former Minneapolis police chief Rose Marie Roux, and through her to the governor. Davenport's job is to fix things (the actual terminology that Sandford employs is a bit more, uh, graphic than that) when a crime on the local level becomes too complicated or touchy.

When a black man and white woman are found dead, victims of an apparent lynching in upstate Minnesota, the call goes out to Davenport to get the job done. Davenport and his running partner, Del Capslock, are soon in the tiny town of Broderick in rural Custer County investigating the deaths, and lives, of Jane Warr and Deon Cash. Davenport slowly discovers that there is far more going on in the quiet streets of Broderick than they would ever suspect.

The murders of Warr and Cash are only the first of many that take place during the course of NAKED PREY. Sandford pulls a really neat trick here. The reader gradually finds out what is going on --- and there is quite a bit --- but is ahead of the curve. The suspense comes into play as the reader watches Davenport painstakingly work his way through the labyrinth of secrets that Broderick holds to his heart. And, as NAKED PREY reaches its conclusion, the question becomes not how Davenport finds out who is behind the multiple murders, but whether he'll find out. And don't presuppose that you already know the answer to that one.

Readers who have stuck with the Davenport series since its inception will find that Sandford, aiming for the moon and stars, has reached the moon and stars. For those who haven't read a Davenport book for a while, or who are unfamiliar with the series, NAKED PREY is the place to jump on, right now. Whether you're looking for a police procedural series that is new to you or not, you need to become familiar with Lucas Davenport and you need to start with NAKED PREY. Very highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub