Search - Naked Prey (Lucas Davenport, Bk 14)

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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW

This is one of the better Prey books! Lucas and Del are on the hunt for kidnapper/killers in a small town. There is definitely something strange going on in this little town, but they can't put their finger on it. I didn't want to put it down!

I have read almost every book in the prey series and this is one of my favorites. Lucas and Weather are married and have a baby. Lucas now works for the Governor under his old boss Rose Marie and his old sidekick Dell is working with him. This is a good story involving kidnapping, murder, money and drugs, and Lucas winds up being good friends with a 12 year old Tomboy. Try it you'll like it.

This was a very interesting book. I found it difficult to put down.

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!

enjoyed it