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For years, a trio of vicious serial murderers has been locked behind bars in Minnesota Security Hospital. But a new killer is on the loose, and his bloody handiwork manifests disturbing similarities to the techniques of the "Big Three." Are these monsters outsourcing terror? Only Lucas Davenport can face down this living nightmare.

From the Publisher

Lucas Davenport confronts a living nightmare, in one of the scariest Prey novels yet from the number-one bestselling author.

The "Big Three" are a trio of inmates locked up in the Minnesota Security Hospital over the years, each a particularly vicious serial killer, each with his own distinct style and propensities. Everybody feels much safer knowing that they're behind bars. Except . . . there's a new killer on the loose. And his handiwork bears a disturbing resemblance to some of the finer points practiced by the Big Three, details that never even made the papers.

Davenport and his team quickly home in on a possible suspect, a man named Charlie Pope, who was released from the same hospital prison a few weeks earlier, and who now seems to have cut himself free from his court-imposed ankle bracelet and disappeared. But is he really the one? And why do the Big Three look so agitated?

Brilliantly suspenseful, consistently surprising-once again, Sandford has outdone himself.

Publishers Weekly

Sandford sends series hero Lucas Davenport's family off to London to ensure that domestic concerns never slow the action in this sexy, bloody thriller. Davenport, a Minnesota State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator, had lately been doing political fix-it jobs for the governor, but this time he's got a psychopathic serial killer on his hands. ("All major metro areas had them, sometimes two and three at a time. The public had the impression that they were rare. They weren't.") The first victim, a young woman, was "scourged" with a wire whip; number two, a young man, had his penis cut off. Evidence first points to recently released sex offender Charlie Pope. Though Charlie is pretty dumb and the killer is extremely smart, it takes Davenport and his series partner, Detective Sloan, a while to realize they're chasing the wrong guy. Sandford introduces some lighter moments, the most entertaining about Davenport's new iPod and his quest to compile a list of the 100 best rock songs ever recorded, which every cop on the force gives him suggestions for. These moments allow readers to catch their breath amid the otherwise nonstop tension as the killer taunts the authorities while snaring more victims, and the cops race around the countryside always just a few minutes too late. For those who thought Davenport (and Sandford) were slowing down and showing signs of age and prosperity, this superlative entry will dispel all such notions. This is tough, unstoppable, white-knuckle fiction. Agent, Esther Newberg. 500,000 first printing; main selections of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Mystery Guild and BOMC. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Lucas Davenport is back, and, yes, this is billed as his scariest adventure yet. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Now that Lucas Davenport's gone up against a Russian spy ring (Hidden Prey, 2004), it's almost anticlimactic to ask him to catch a mere serial killer. But that's the only anticlimax here. What are the odds that the M.O. behind Angela Larson's murder-she was bound, scourged with a wire whip, and repeatedly raped before her throat was cut and her body laid out in a ritualistic display-would be repeated with a male victim? But Adam Rice, an old acquaintance of Blue Earth County sheriff Gene Nordwall's, presents the same grisly picture. Was their killer gay or bisexual? How did he find his victims? And what do they have in common? Lucas, who runs the Office of Regional Research for the Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, is all over the case, amassing evidence against Charlie Pope, a sex offender just released from St. John's Security Hospital with a few months to run on his sentence but his attitude still intact. Charlie has celebrated his freedom by sawing off his ankle monitor and vanishing-except for the trace evidence he's left at the crime scenes and the phone calls he makes, first to ambitious Star-Tribune reporter Ruffe Ignace, then to Lucas himself. The only trouble is that Charlie's clearly not smart enough to be the murderer. He must be getting help from somebody-maybe from one of the habitual Big Three offenders he spent time with at St. John's. Wondering whether anybody not named Hannibal Lecter can be issuing murderous instructions from inside a prison, Lucas and Co. hunker down to take a long hard look at the hospital just as things start to get really interesting. A tale so fast-moving you won't even notice the unobtrusively expert detective work till the second timearound. First printing of 500,000; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection; Literary Guild main selection; author tour

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Product Details

• ISBN: 0425204308
  
• ISBN-13: 9780425204306
• Format: Mass Market Paperback, 496pp
• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
• Pub. Date: May 2006
• Edition Description: Reprint
• Sales Rank: 5,579
• Series: Lucas Davenport Series, #16