Wicked Prey (Lucas Davenport Series #19) by John Sandford

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It's September 2008, and the Republicans have come to St. Paul, Minnesota, for their convention. For most of the delegates, guests, reporters, and locals, it's a festive event, an occasion for having a good time and experiencing a unique moment in history. For law enforcement officials, however, it offers a grab-bag of embarrassing dangers, from small-fry con men to major stickup artists. For Lucas Davenport, this teeming, suddenly raucous city harbors one special threat: A psychopath with a poisoned memory, a gun, and a plan. And it turns out that he's not the only crazy person out there….

From the Publisher

Danger stalks Lucas Davenport at work and all too close to home, in the superlative new thriller by the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.

For twenty years, John Sandford's novels have been beloved for their "ingenious plots, vivid characters, crisp dialogue and endless surprises" (The Washington Post), and nowhere are those more in evidence than in the sudden twists and shocks of Wicked Prey.

The Republicans are coming to St. Paul for their convention. Throwing a big party is supposed to be fun, but crashing the party are a few hard cases the police would rather stayed away. Chief among them is a crew of professional stickup men who've spotted several lucrative opportunities, ranging from political moneymen with briefcases full of cash to that armored-car warehouse with the weakness in its security system. All that's headache enough for Lucas Davenport-but what's about to hit him is even worse.

A while back, a stray bullet put a pimp and petty thief named Randy Whitcomb in a wheelchair, and, ever since, the man has been nursing his grudge into a full head of psychotic steam. He blames Davenport for the bullet, but it's no fun just shooting him. That wouldn't be painful enough. Not when Davenport has a pretty fourteen-year-old adopted daughter that Whitcomb can target instead. . . .

And then there's the young man with the .50 caliber sniper rifle and the right- wing-crazy background, roaming through a city filled with the most powerful politicians on earth. . . . Rich with his brilliant trademark suspense and some of the best characters in suspense fiction, Wicked Prey is further proof that "Sandford is one of the most consistently entertaining crimewriters working today" (Booklist).

Publishers Weekly

The 2008 Republican convention serves as the backdrop for bestseller Sandford's amped-up, ultra-violent 19th thriller to feature Lucas Davenport of the Minneapolis Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (after Phantom Prey). An assassination plot aimed at John McCain turns out to be just a sidebar to another criminal operation-extremely slick thieves have come to the twin cities to rob Republican political operatives loaded down with millions of dollars of "street money," illegal handouts for low-level campaign workers. Mastermind Rosie Cruz handles the gang's complicated planning, while gangster Brutus Cohn does the robbery and killing aided by a couple of lesser thugs. A subplot involving Davenport's teenage ward, Letty West, who's provided interesting complications in the series, establishes her as a brave and intrepid investigator. A slam-bang shootout climax proves that Davenport still has what it takes when it comes to guts and gunplay. 500,000 first printing; author tour. (May)

Kirkus Reviews

The 2008 Republican National Convention sweeps into the Twin Cities, bringing in its wake a world of trouble for Lucas Davenport's hometown. When you think Republicans, you think big money. So do supercriminal Brutus Cohn and Rosie Cruz, his partner in a scheme to rob the visiting delegates blind. Working with ex-cons Jesse Lane and Tate McCall, they start out small, with a series of hotel-room invasions aimed at walking-around money whose loss they assume won't be reported to the law because it's already illegal. But all that changes when they're forced to kill a suburban police officer. Lucas Davenport, of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (Phantom Prey, 2008, etc.), soon figures out what sort of violent, cold-hearted crooks he's up against, but with every law-enforcement officer in Minneapolis-St. Paul already detailed to the convention, it's hard to know what to do-especially against lawbreakers who soon figure out that he's onto them. From that point on Sandford expertly dramatizes a tug-of-war complicated by two wild cards: Oklahoma neo-Nazi sharpshooter Justice Shafer, who claims he's just passing through, and cranked-up paraplegic Randy Whitcomb, a sociopath determined to wreak vengeance against Lucas, the man he holds responsible for ruining his life. Killing Lucas, Randy decides, would be too easy; he'll go after his family instead. So as Lucas is strained to the max responding to the rising tide of violence against the well-heeled delegates and their protectors, someone he's never thought about is planning to blindside him. Especially notable here is the unsought help Lucas receives from a charmingly unlikely guardian angel who takes the battle against his family backto the villain. The multiple plots are untidily stuck together, as if with mucilage, but Sandford keeps stepping up the pressure until it seems as if more than Randy Whitcomb is running on crank. First printing of 500,000

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