Broken Prey - John Sandford (3.5 out of 5)
Sandford's series of novels built around the Minneapolis detective Lucas Davenport are consistently excellent reads. Seventeen novels into this series the writing is still fresh, full of energy and compelling. Lucas is older, but he's still got that cynical bad boy edge to him, and a good dose of self depreciation that makes him so likeable. On the other hand, Sandford had to domesticate Lucas, finally, and that's both good and bad. Lucas was a lot of fun when he was out there appreciating women, but I really like Weather (his wife, who is a surgeon) and the way they talk to each other.
This Prey novel is a bit of a departure in three ways:
- Often in these books we know the bad guy right from the start, and it's just a matter of Lucas pinning things down. This time we think we know a lot of things and keep finding that we don't. Until we do, quite late in the game.
- There's very little of Lucas's personal side. Sandford ships Weather and the rest of the household off to London for the summer. Weather's role is limited almost completely to telephone calls. Lucas misses Weather. I missed Weather. I realize Sandford was trying to simplify on one side because he had a very complex story to handle, but I didn't like the shortcut he took to do this. To offset this lack, Sandford does provide something interesting. Throughout the novel, Lucas is trying to come up with a list of the best hundred songs of the rock era. Odd conversations are tucked in here and there when friends raise the subject and suggest songs. It's quirky and works very well. Sandford went so far as to include the list at the end of the novel, which is a kind of metafiction touch that I like a lot.
- This novel is far more procedural in approach than the others. We follow the case step by step, taking wrong turns and figuring that out, analyzing evidence, going through the mundane part of police work. My personal take is, somewhat less would have been more.
Things I liked: there are some very interesting minor characters, people we see on a regular basis, though their connection to the primary plot is unclear until very late. I found myself more interested in the story of Millie and her boyfriend than I was in Lucas and yet another dead end clue. Most of all, Sandford does a masterful job of giving us The Gods Down the Hall -- three men serving life sentences in a hospital for the criminally insane for really horrendous murders. Somehow these three seem to be directing the murders that Lucas is investigating, but how they are pulling it off, that's the question.
All in all this particular episode in Lucas's career felt a little off balance to me. It's not my least favorite of the series, but it's not in the top ten, either.