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Synopsis

John Sandford's bestselling Lucas Davenport series continues with the fast-paced, compelling thriller, Night Prey. A series of deaths leads to the possibility of a brutal serial killer of unusual skill and savagery. And if Lucas is right, the killer is just getting warmed up...

Annotation

From the author of Winter Prey comes a "potent and compelling addition to the (Lucas Davenport) series" (Kirkus Reviews). Deputy Police Chief Lucas Davenport returns to face his most brilliantly elusive opponent yet--a master thief-turned-murderer who carves into his victims the initials of a beautiful woman with whom he has become obsessed. LG, Doubleday, and Mystery Guild Selections.

Publishers Weekly

The pseudonymous Sandford (he's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp) keeps turning out better and better thrillers. In this sixth entry in his Prey series, streetwise Minneapolis deputy police chief Lucas Davenport is beleaguered by perplexing females. Charged with saving the political life of Rose Marie Roux, the ambitious police chief who has her eye on a Senate seat, he's given the assignment of tracking to ground the sex-crazed perpetrator of a series of murders of young women. Davenport's unwelcome colleague in this case is feminist Meagan Connell, an abrasive State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator who's obsessed with catching the killer before she dies of cancer. Also bedeviled by the ill-timed assignment of a new partner, a yuppie who was formerly assigned to the grade schools as ``Officer Friendly'' and who happens to be the husband of the mayor's niece, Davenport is additionally saddled with the mystifying death of an elderly woman who died rather conveniently, freeing some local hoods to profit from a real-estate scam. Juxtaposing the dark consciousness of the sex-fixated murderer against the narrative perspective of Davenport, Sandford builds a compelling counter-rhythm of suspense. The narrative is sensitively embued with Davenport's humaneness as, in awe, he watches Connell courageously fight to postpone her impending death. Yet, credibly flawed, the cop also displays a roving eye when he's momentarily distracted from his deep commitment to the lovely physician Weather Karkinnen by a beautiful and seductive TV anchor. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection; Mystery Guild alternate. (May)

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Biography

John Sandford began his career as a journalist using his real name, John Camp. He won a Pulitzer for feature writing before turning to mystery-suspense novels, simultaneously releasing two �first� novels under two different names in 1989.

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Customer Reviews

Number of Reviews: 1
Average Rating:
Write a Review

BETTER THAN SOME-WORSE THAN OTEHRS!!
Mac Blair (macblair@usit.net) , A reviewer, 03/12/2001

I have read all the Prey series up to and including this one. I liked Night Prey better than some of the others. One thing I like is Lucus did not fall into bed with nearly everybody he saw in this one. I still feel Winter Prey is the best one I have read so far. In Night Prey, Koop is the killer, you know that from the first page, there is no doubt. The story follows the same format. Lucus and team keep asking questions and following up on leads until they figure out who the killer is. They then set a trap for him which does not go as expected. I was surprised at the ending. I liked it as it was an unusual twist. The characters are good and you can see in your mind what is happening. The bad thing is you know that what is written here can actually happen in everday live. Thats not good.

Fact File

Name:
John Sandford

Also Known As:
John Roswell Camp

Current Home:
St. Paul, Minnesota

Date of Birth:
February 23, 1944

Place of Birth:
Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Education:
State University of Iowa, Iowa City: B.A., American History; M.A., Journalism

Awards:
Feature Writing Pulitzer Prize for the five-part series "Life on the Land: An American Farm Family," 1986

* John Sandford's official web site

Biography

Whether they are fans of John Sandford's Prey series or John Camp's Kidd series, mystery readers are delighted by one author's ability to create nasty good guys -- and even nastier villains. Throw them in the middle of a spine-tingling plot, and you've got one of the best suspense writers on the scene.

Camp started his career as a crime reporter at The Miami Herald, moving to Minnesota's Saint Paul Pioneer Press & Dispatch in 1978 to work as a general reporter and eventually becoming one of the paper's most popular columnists and feature writers. His five-part series on the farm crisis in southwest Minnesota charted the ups and downs of one farm family for an entire year. The series, "Life on the Land: An American Farm Family," won Camp many awards, most notably a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and an American Society of Newspaper Editors award for Non-Deadline Feature Writing.

Camp soon fused his journalistic instincts with his talent for telling fantastic stories, and his career as a novelist took off with the release of two "first" novels. Within a few short months, The Fool's Run was released under the name John Camp and Rules of Prey under the name John Sandford, due to the fact that two different publishing companies were putting out the books. To this day, the Pray series bears the Sandford byline, while the author's original name remains attached to the Kidd series.

With a passion for history and archaeology, Camp has recently worked at a number of archaeological digs, mainly Tel Rehov in Israel, which is 30 minutes south of the Sea of Galilee. Among his group's accomplishments are uncovered the remains of a city and finding pottery from the Bronze Age through the Ottoman era -- a range of almost 3,000 years. Outside of writing, this is one of Camp's greatest loves, which he describes as "very hot, dusty, butt-kicking work, and totally fascinating."

Camp has also authored two nonfiction books. The Eye and the Heart: The Watercolors of John Stuart Ingle examines the life and work of Camp's favorite Minnesota artist. And in Plastic Surgery: The Kindest Cut Camp teamed up with Bruce Cunningham, a surgeon at the University of Minnesota, to provide readers with a comprehensive, unbiased overview of common procedures, their costs and effects.

The wildly popular Prey series has yielded a string of bestsellers and a loyal fan base, thanks to its protagonist, the hard-boiled, iconoclastic detective Lucas Davenport. Fans of Sandford keep coming back for his intelligent plots, gut-level intensity, and villains as sympathetically human as his heroes. Asked whether he would ever kill off his signature character, Lucas Davenport, Sandford told the MSN Books and Reading forum in 1999, "I don't want to kill Davenport off, but I would like to see him go out with some kind of good relation with a woman and the possibility of long-term happiness."

Good to Know

Don't confuse John Sandford with John Sanford -- it's one of Sandford's pet peeves. Sanford (without the "d") is a Christian philosophy writer.

The Sandford pseudonym has caused a few problems for Camp in the past. At an airport once, his ticket was reserved under Sandford, while all of his identification, of course, had the name Camp. Luckily, he had one of his novels with him, and thanks to the book jacket photo, he was able to convince airport security to let him on the plane. Sandford, by the way, is John's father's middle name.

Sandford's four novels in the Kidd series are, in fact, written chronologically, something many readers do not realize. The paperback version of the second novel in the series, The Empress File, erroneously claims that it is the first. It's not, and the series is best read in this order: The Fool's Run, The Empress File, The Devil's Code, and The Hanged Man's Song.

Feature Interview

In the summer of 2004, we asked authors featured in Meet the Writers to give us a list of their all-time favorite summer reads, and tell us what makes them just right for the season. Here's what John Sandford had to say:

I read thrillers all the time -- I love them, but it's also part of my business, so I do not include them on my summer reading list. Summer reading to me has always meant a book I might not otherwise look at, and that I wound up enjoying enormously. These are listed in no particular order.

Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian -- Not the first of the Aubrey-Maturin series, but the first I read, and one of the best realized.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White -- A classic re-telling of the Authur legend, and one of the great romances of all time.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas -- One of the best revenge stories ever told, and a terrific swashbuckler.

The Iliad by Homer (Trans. by Robert Fagles) -- Want to know about battle? This is the place, and this is my favorite translation. I wish I knew how Fagles pronounced his name.

Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell -- George Custer bites the dust, but takes his time doing it. If you read it, you'll know why it's on this list.

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth -- Certainly better than any non-fiction history.

Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson -- Either that, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Funny little nightmares for my generation.

Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad. Best opening two pages in English literature. I suspect Hemingway stole from it.

1984 by George Orwell -- Also Homage to Catalonia and Animal Farm. Read all three; together, they're not much longer than one. This is where my personal politics come from.

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara -- The best re-telling of the Gettysburg story.

From the Publisher

John Sandford's bestselling Lucas Davenport series continues with the fast-paced, compelling thriller, Night Prey. A series of deaths leads to the possibility of a brutal serial killer of unusual skill and savagery. And if Lucas is right, the killer is just getting warmed up...

Publishers Weekly

The pseudonymous Sandford (he's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp) keeps turning out better and better thrillers. In this sixth entry in his Prey series, streetwise Minneapolis deputy police chief Lucas Davenport is beleaguered by perplexing females. Charged with saving the political life of Rose Marie Roux, the ambitious police chief who has her eye on a Senate seat, he's given the assignment of tracking to ground the sex-crazed perpetrator of a series of murders of young women. Davenport's unwelcome colleague in this case is feminist Meagan Connell, an abrasive State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator who's obsessed with catching the killer before she dies of cancer. Also bedeviled by the ill-timed assignment of a new partner, a yuppie who was formerly assigned to the grade schools as ``Officer Friendly'' and who happens to be the husband of the mayor's niece, Davenport is additionally saddled with the mystifying death of an elderly woman who died rather conveniently, freeing some local hoods to profit from a real-estate scam. Juxtaposing the dark consciousness of the sex-fixated murderer against the narrative perspective of Davenport, Sandford builds a compelling counter-rhythm of suspense. The narrative is sensitively embued with Davenport's humaneness as, in awe, he watches Connell courageously fight to postpone her impending death. Yet, credibly flawed, the cop also displays a roving eye when he's momentarily distracted from his deep commitment to the lovely physician Weather Karkinnen by a beautiful and seductive TV anchor. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection; Mystery Guild alternate. (May)

Library Journal

This novel is sixth in the ``Prey'' series, written by journalist John Camp under the Sandford pseudonym and featuring Porsche-driving Minneapolis police detective Lucas Davenport. Here Davenport, who has just returned to duty after recovering from a serious gunshot wound, must face a serial killer named Koop, who is dropping bodies all over the metropolitan area. Koop makes the mistake of becoming a little too obsessed with a potential victim and thus leaves a trail that Davenport and his fellow officers finally discover. Despite its length, Night Prey is a tight, fast-moving thriller with appealing good guys and a suitably evil villain. Especially fascinating among the characters is Policewoman Connell, who is dying of cancer and whose fate becomes linked to Koop's in the spectacular climax. Buy wherever thrillers are read. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/94.]-A.J. Wright, Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham

BookList

Sandford's sixth "Prey" novel follows the same formula as the first five: sharp-tongued Minneapolis deputy police chief Lucas Davenport is on the trail of a serial killer--this time a particularly nasty specimen with a yen for disemboweling his victims. Meagan Connell, an investigator from a state agency, plays the de rigueur role of Davenport's feisty, determined female assistant. Davenport is also peripherally involved in a case that appears to involve the Seeds, a loosely organized group of white supremacists. The third-person narration takes the reader along with the serial killer as he makes his rounds, choosing and stalking his victims. Alternately, the narrative follows the victims and the investigators. There is no mystery here; the killer's identity is clear from page one. The suspense lies in the investigation. Will Davenport and Connell catch the killer before he gets that one, last, innocent victim? Yes, the plotting seems lifted from dozens of interchangeable slasher flicks, but the dialogue crackles and individual scenes can be almost unbearably suspenseful. This may be the first good suntan book of 1994. A little sunblock, a tall cool one, and a serial killer--ah, summertime.

Customer Reviews

Number of Reviews: 1
Average Rating:
Write a Review

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BETTER THAN SOME-WORSE THAN OTEHRS!!
Mac Blair (macblair@usit.net), A reviewer, 03/12/2001

I have read all the Prey series up to and including this one. I liked Night Prey better than some of the others. One thing I like is Lucus did not fall into bed with nearly everybody he saw in this one. I still feel Winter Prey is the best one I have read so far. In Night Prey, Koop is the killer, you know that from the first page, there is no doubt. The story follows the same format. Lucus and team keep asking questions and following up on leads until they figure out who the killer is. They then set a trap for him which does not go as expected. I was surprised at the ending. I liked it as it was an unusual twist. The characters are good and you can see in your mind what is happening. The bad thing is you know that what is written here can actually happen in everday live. Thats not good.

Product Details

ISBN: 0425146413
ISBN-13: 9780425146415
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 400pp
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Pub. Date: March 1995
Sales Rank: 6,840
Series: Lucas Davenport Series, #6

Table of Contents

Night Prey by John Sandford

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Synopsis

Annotation

Publishers Weekly

Biography

Customer Reviews

Fact File

Biography

Good to Know

Feature Interview

From the Publisher

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

BookList

Customer Reviews

Product Details

Table of Contents

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