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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
Only half of a book, and a repulsive one at that
Review of the Audible Audio edition (2019) narrated by Richard Ferrone
TW = brutal violence, cannibalism, assault
I’m not going to bury the lead here. This book mostly consists of several set pieces where Lucas Davenport and the U.S. Marshals with occasional other police forces are closing in on/and or confronting the villains. These scenes are then completely repeated from the other point of view i.e. first we get the police side in its entirety and then the entire scene is retold from the point of view of the criminals. This technique might be useful if some sort of intriguing insight was revealed, but that is rarely the case. It just begins to feel like padding, a technique to double the length of the material.
The fact that the criminal side is more repulsive than usual just adds to the repellant nature of the results.
I usually find Sandford’s annual Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers crime mysteries to be reliable sources of entertainment with their often engaging banter between the detectives and crafty foes to be detected and defeated. This one just felt off and cheap.
The narration by series regular Richard Ferrone was still excellent though.
Review of the Audible Audio edition (2019) narrated by Richard Ferrone
TW = brutal violence, cannibalism, assault
I’m not going to bury the lead here. This book mostly consists of several set pieces where Lucas Davenport and the U.S. Marshals with occasional other police forces are closing in on/and or confronting the villains. These scenes are then completely repeated from the other point of view i.e. first we get the police side in its entirety and then the entire scene is retold from the point of view of the criminals. This technique might be useful if some sort of intriguing insight was revealed, but that is rarely the case. It just begins to feel like padding, a technique to double the length of the material.
The fact that the criminal side is more repulsive than usual just adds to the repellant nature of the results.
I usually find Sandford’s annual Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers crime mysteries to be reliable sources of entertainment with their often engaging banter between the detectives and crafty foes to be detected and defeated. This one just felt off and cheap.
The narration by series regular Richard Ferrone was still excellent though.
I've been reading Sandford Prey novels for more than 20 years - this was my least favorite of the series. The plot is absurd - the characters unbelievable. Pass on this one and move on to another in the series.
Another fantastic John Sandford book. He never disappoints!
Lucas Davenport is working for the U.S. Marshal Service, hunting down the worst. He gets called down to New Orleans because a tough guy who was being held for beating a man for a loan shark has fled when out on bail. Bodies with parts missing and a grill with human DNA shows that the man Deese had been cannibalizing people for years.
Lucas and 2 other marshals, Rae and Bob, get a tip that he may have headed to a half-brother in California. There they find the brother runs with some very successful home invaders. Lucas and team find them but when a SWAT team goes in, Lucas is shot and 2 of the gang are killed but the rest escape including Deese. Several months later when Lucas has had some time to recover he's back on the trail and now in Vegas where things will get bloody again. Deese comes from very crazy stock including his uncle who is a desert rat.
Still married to Weather. Sam is 9. Daughter is a senior at Stanford. Virgil hangs out and has pregnant girlfriend, Frankie. No mention of Lucas's nun friend. Or his biological daughter.
Very handy that no one followed up on the leads while Lucas was recuperating.
Lucas and 2 other marshals, Rae and Bob, get a tip that he may have headed to a half-brother in California. There they find the brother runs with some very successful home invaders. Lucas and team find them but when a SWAT team goes in, Lucas is shot and 2 of the gang are killed but the rest escape including Deese. Several months later when Lucas has had some time to recover he's back on the trail and now in Vegas where things will get bloody again. Deese comes from very crazy stock including his uncle who is a desert rat.
Still married to Weather. Sam is 9. Daughter is a senior at Stanford. Virgil hangs out and has pregnant girlfriend, Frankie. No mention of Lucas's nun friend. Or his biological daughter.
Very handy that no one followed up on the leads while Lucas was recuperating.
Lucy’s Davenport is sent to track down a New Orleans hitman who also has buried multiple bodies in his swampy backyard.
The killer flees town and hooks up with his half brother whose gang specializes in home invasions of the wealthy in the LA area.
The killer flees town and hooks up with his half brother whose gang specializes in home invasions of the wealthy in the LA area.
One of the more lightweight (albeit ghastly) Lucas Davenport outings. The running joke--the man he and others are tracking ate pieces of his earlier victims--gets a little tiresome, involving lots of 'OMG the Cannibal!' references. And the very end of the book--the inevitable, horrible showdown--goes on too long.
But along the way there's lots of snappy writing, which is the main attraction in a Sandford book. Funny cop-to-cop exchanges, tactical screwups (there are a lot of them, in this book) and glimpses into the personal lives of totally despicable people make the book bounce along. The settings (LA and Vegas) are colorful and the bad guys' tricks are clever enough to fool smart cops a lot of the time. And the last 10 pages--a kind of epilogue--are fun.
Four-minus.
But along the way there's lots of snappy writing, which is the main attraction in a Sandford book. Funny cop-to-cop exchanges, tactical screwups (there are a lot of them, in this book) and glimpses into the personal lives of totally despicable people make the book bounce along. The settings (LA and Vegas) are colorful and the bad guys' tricks are clever enough to fool smart cops a lot of the time. And the last 10 pages--a kind of epilogue--are fun.
Four-minus.
Another solid Lucas Davenport read. I'm beginning to wonder if Mr. Sandford is having some issues with the woman in his life though. LOL
The United States Marshals went to pick up Clayton Deese after he failed to show up for trial. Everyone knows Clayton Deese did the crime he is wanted for and if it was not for bureaucratic issues they would not already be at least three days behind me. His ankle monitor went dark at about the same time that he failed to show up for court. No doubt he has left his home in a rural area of Louisiana. Still, Marshals Rae Givens and Bob Matees and F. B. I. Agent Tremanty have to raid the house Deese was living in to make sure he really left. If he is gone, a manhunt will begin as they need to apprehend this guy, not only for what they know he did, but because he is a link to a far bigger target.
When law enforcement hits the house, it is clear that Deese is long gone and is never coming back. The house sits on a large piece of land that has a swamp like area outback that is thickly wooded with at least one trail back into the woods. A trail that clearly gets frequent use. A trail that goes quite a distance back in where there is thick ground cover and clearly more open areas that could be more than one shallow grave. Maybe many graves.
What is found means US Marshal Lucas Davenport is soon on the way to help track down the missing Clayton Deese. A hunt for a contract killer who occasionally indulges in a taste for human flesh. A contract killer who happens to be in close contact with some other folks in another part of the country that also need to be stopped as soon as possible.
The latest in a long line of thrillers by John Sandford, Neon Prey, is another good one. As true with earlier books in the Lucas Davenport series in recent years, the bad guys and girls are known to the reader from their first introduction. Unlike the way it was when this series started when there was a complexity to the reads and there was a solid mystery, there is no mystery at all here expect for the fact Law Enforcement does not know from the start just how bad Clayton Deese is or the identities of some other folks who also need to be stopped. This book is a straight action read where the pace is fast, chapters are short, descriptions of locations are kept to a minimum, and the clock to prevent more carnage is always ticking. For writers, this read, as has the last several in the series, fits the old adage ascribed to Elmore Leonard about leaving out the parts that readers tend to skip.
Pure escapism, Neon Prey, is another good one in the Lucas Davenport Series.
Neon Prey: A Lucas Davenport Novel
John Sandford
http://www.johnsandford.org
Random House Large Print
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/large-print-format-books
April 2019
ISBN#978-1-9848-8283-7
Paperback (also available in hardback, audio, and digital formats)
480 Pages (461 pages are the actual story)
$31.00
Material supplied by the good folks of the Dallas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2019
When law enforcement hits the house, it is clear that Deese is long gone and is never coming back. The house sits on a large piece of land that has a swamp like area outback that is thickly wooded with at least one trail back into the woods. A trail that clearly gets frequent use. A trail that goes quite a distance back in where there is thick ground cover and clearly more open areas that could be more than one shallow grave. Maybe many graves.
What is found means US Marshal Lucas Davenport is soon on the way to help track down the missing Clayton Deese. A hunt for a contract killer who occasionally indulges in a taste for human flesh. A contract killer who happens to be in close contact with some other folks in another part of the country that also need to be stopped as soon as possible.
The latest in a long line of thrillers by John Sandford, Neon Prey, is another good one. As true with earlier books in the Lucas Davenport series in recent years, the bad guys and girls are known to the reader from their first introduction. Unlike the way it was when this series started when there was a complexity to the reads and there was a solid mystery, there is no mystery at all here expect for the fact Law Enforcement does not know from the start just how bad Clayton Deese is or the identities of some other folks who also need to be stopped. This book is a straight action read where the pace is fast, chapters are short, descriptions of locations are kept to a minimum, and the clock to prevent more carnage is always ticking. For writers, this read, as has the last several in the series, fits the old adage ascribed to Elmore Leonard about leaving out the parts that readers tend to skip.
Pure escapism, Neon Prey, is another good one in the Lucas Davenport Series.
Neon Prey: A Lucas Davenport Novel
John Sandford
http://www.johnsandford.org
Random House Large Print
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/large-print-format-books
April 2019
ISBN#978-1-9848-8283-7
Paperback (also available in hardback, audio, and digital formats)
480 Pages (461 pages are the actual story)
$31.00
Material supplied by the good folks of the Dallas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2019