Storm Prey by John Sandford

Lucas Davenport: Book 20
Format: eBook
Pub. Date: 2010
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Type: Fiction, Mystery, Series ~ Library Book
Read: 09/04/2012
Rating: Liked it

Before you ask, I skipped books 1-19. My friend, who I have know for years and never knew her to do much straight pleasure reading, if you don’t know what I mean, she would read books on child rearing, her children has disabilities, so she has books on dealing with that, books to help with her job etc. Recently she bought an iPad, then she discovered iBooks. Then our conversations became littered with referenced to John Sandford and a cop in Minnesota who drove a Porsche and had a daughter and a wife. I decided I needed to read one (or two) of these books to see what the fuss was all about. So I headed to the library, not a lot of ebooks to borrow for this series. This and the other one I’m going to review were all that was available.

The story starts with the robbery of a hospital pharmacy, as so often happens, things go wrong and one of the robbers kills one of the workers. As they are leaving the hospital they are spotted by Weather Karkinnen, the wife of Lucas Davenport. Things go from bad to worse for the robbers and as this makes things get much more interesting for the reader. Lucas calls in his “pack” to protect Weather, the robbers hire a (psycho)killer to go after her, there is a doctor working with the robbers feeding them information. Did I mention the killer is psycho?

There are multiple story lines, the search for the robbers conducted by the police and aided by Lucas and his investigators, the robbers actions to cover their tracks and eliminate those who are ‘weak links’, the doctor and his cocaine addiction that lead to the robbery, a delicate operation to separate twins joined at the head, and Lucas actions to protect his wife. Through all this the reader knows all, we walk along with the robbers, with the doctor and with Lucas. At times I was wondering, Lucas has to find this out! How is he going to do that?

Since I read true crime there were times when I said, “That’s not how that works!” But then, things could be different in Minnesota. This was a fast paced story, the action went at a good pace, not breathless but not plodding. For Lucas being referred to as a ‘killer’ I didn’t see much evidence of that, there were not any wild west shoot-outs. There were some references to past events, but having not read any of the previous books I was able to follow along the story, if anything the past remarks made me want to go back and read some of the old one. If I had the time and didn’t have a mountain of books to read already.

An enjoyable book that I would recommend to mystery/detective story fans.