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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I liked it!, August 23, 2000
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.
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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
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
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sandford Shows His Sensitive Side, September 9, 2004
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.
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