The Night Crew (AUDIOBOOK) (CD) [Unabridged] [Audio CD]

John Sandford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2007

Pulitzer prize-winning novelist John Sandford has justly earned his reputation as master of the thriller genre with his eight best-selling Prey books. Now he takes his listeners to even greater heights of suspense with a new cast of characters and more harrowing plot twists than ever before. Anna Batory may be a small, shy farm girl from Wisconsin, but on the streets of Los Angeles she's tough, very tough. She runs a night crew of video free-lancers who roam the city shooting footage of accidents, robberies, and demonstrations to sell to the TV networks or local stations. After her crew films a suicide in progress, she suddenly finds herself the target of a deadly stalker, and her life becomes more dark and dangerous than any news story she's ever encountered. The juxtaposition of narrator Richard Ferrone's expressive gruffness with John Sandford's masterful story-telling creates an audiobook that sizzles and crackles with energy. Listeners will find it hard to stop listening up to the last suspenseful moment.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• ISBN-10: 1436123208
• ISBN-13: 978-1436123204
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,942,551 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

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I liked it!, August 23, 2000

By 

Daniel J. Connelly "djconnel" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Night Crew (Prey) (Hardcover)

Like other reviewers, I am a big fan of the Prey Series. And like other reviewers, I found the style of Night Crew substantially different from that of the Preys.

But I liked it.

With respect to the style -- there are two really obvious differences. One is the location, Los Angeles, as opposed to Minneapolis-St Paul, the center of the Prey universe. This is perhaps the biggest weakness of the book. The reader doesn't get a real feel for the locale, or the feeling Sandford spent much time there. LA was just a name, with its associated collection of street names, but it could have been almost anywhere else, for all I knew. I had no sense of the atmosphere that comes out in Michael Connelly's work.

The other obvious difference is the main character is female. I find it fascinating when an author writes on a protagonist of the opposite gender. In this case, Sandford is more successful, as far as I can tell as a male. I never had the feeling that the character was straying into a male perspective.

Other aspects of the book were also good. Unlike most of the Prey material, this book was a bit more mystery, a bit less thriller. In mysteries, the question is what did happen, while in thrillers, the question is only what will happen. And Sandford plays fair. He provides enough clues for educated conjecture without making it easy on the reader to guess the answer.

I also liked the characters. Probing characters isn't Sandford's strong point in any of his work. But I found the ones in this book likeable and, unlike other reviewers, I found them believable.

So I recommend Night Crew. It was a lot of fun to read, and I didn't feel at all cheated at the end. It isn't Lucas Davenport, but it doesn't need to be.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the John Sandford to start with, October 6, 2004

By 

Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Night Crew (Prey) (Hardcover)

Fortunately, this was not the first John Sandford novel I've read. Had it been, I probably would never have discovered the delights of Sandford's "Prey" series, which is far more accomplished and enthralling.

"Night Crew" is about Anna Bantory who runs a free-lance TV crew that roams Los Angeles at night, gathering footage they hope to sell to television stations. One night, they tape a raid by animal activists. Coincidentally a call comes in that someone is on a hotel window ledge and may jump. Anna's crew records the jump.

Hours later, someone murders a member of Anna's crew and off we go into the pursuit of a crazed killer who is obsessed with Anna.

Ho-hum. The characters are thin, the plot contrived and the novel interminable. It's not a total waste of time, but there are many other cop-novels out there that are far more enjoyable, including Sandford's own "Prey" series, which I highly recommend.

Jerry

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sandford Shows His Sensitive Side, September 9, 2004

By 

C. T. Mikesell (near Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Night Crew (Mass Market Paperback)

Written with the same choppy scenes of an MTV video or the guerrilla journalism film of the story's main characters, this novel is quite unlike Sandford's Prey or Kidd series. Not only is the pacing and style different, but also his male characters have fully embraced their feminine sides to the point of being almost wimpy (even a minor character, a massive weightlifter, can freely admit to his fear of surgery). Perhaps this is to enhance his female protagonist's machoness, perhaps it's a slam at sunny California from the security of his snowbound Minnesota; either way it's a noticeable departure from his stubborn, tough-as-nails, manly-men characters.

Sandford has structured The Night Crew like a standard mystery, where the reader doesn't discover the identity of the killer until the heroine does. This means a lot of dead ends, as every last red herring has to be tracked down before the case cracks wide open. This too is a departure from Sandford's standard fare.

As with any "introductory novel," Anna Batory's story is packed with background information about its characters. Combined with the brief story segments, accommodating all the backstory makes for some very choppy, occasionally disoriented reading. I'm sure some of this is intentional, but at times it all became a little overwhelming. Combined with a lackluster serial killer (there's really nothing to him beyond general creepiness and a generic FBI profile) and several noticeable plot holes (How is Anna's neighbor able to check up on Creek who's registered in the hospital under an alias? Why aren't suspects immediately written off when they lack the requisite facial damage?), and The Night Crew becomes a run-of-the-mill story, rather than a masterpiece.

For all its shortcomings, though, The Night Crew is still an enjoyable read. Television is full of shows that didn't gel right away or took awhile to find an audience. Should Sandford choose to send Anna, Creek and company off on another investigation I wouldn't hesitate to pick it up.