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Masked Prey by John Sandford

Masked Prey (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) is #30 in John Sandford’s “Prey” series in which Lucas Davenport, a well-dressed investigator, hunts down killers, criminals, accomplices and various other ne’er-do-wells. In the first book of the series, Rules of Prey, Davenport is a police lieutenant in Minneapolis and the only member of the department’s Office of Special Intelligence. A slick ladies man with both money and scruples, Davenport drives to work in a shiny red Porsche and flies first class when he needs to. 

His career follows a straight path from the Minneapolis police force to the United States Marshals Service, while his private life is passionate and unpredictable. There’s no shortage of beautiful women, gunplay, murders and intrigue in all of the books in the Prey series; but by the time Lucas walks onto the pages of Masked Prey, he is older and wiser and more settled. 

This time, his goal is to prevent a murder rather than find a murderer. The daughter of a U.S. senator and a cheeky presence on social media, Audrey Coil stumbles across footage of herself and some of her classmates — also children of U.S. senators — walking near or entering their school. Accompanying this footage is white supremacist propaganda. The juxtaposition is alarming. Who is photographing the children? What is being suggested? No crime has been committed. Yet.

The FBI needs outside help and they turn to our man Lucas.

Masked Prey will convince readers that nobody is safe from cyberspies and hackers. Lucas tracks his prey through cell phone towers and laser printer codes.  Who knew there were identifying codes on the printouts of laser printers? Sandford has clearly done his research, and the book sizzles with unnerving technology breaches. Not all is bloodless detective work, however; there’s plenty of murders at point-blank range to satisfy the most serious fan of crime novels.

A SERIES WITH SPIN-OFFS

Sandford builds a world riddled with crime and justice, peopled by memorable and richly drawn characters, some of whom turn up in other books. Lucas, for example, invites his friend Virgil Flowers to join the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and thus spawns the dozen novels that make up the Virgil Flowers series. But Sandford doesn’t quit there; he introduces Kidd, artist, tarot card reader and computer whiz, who gets into messes of his own in the Kidd novels. 

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Sandford brings an earthy, solid edge to his writing. Under his given name, John Roswell Camp, he writes non-fiction about an amazing range of topics:  farming, riots, plastic surgery and the watercolors of artist John Stuart Ingle.  He was embedded with the 2-147 Air Assault Battalion during the Iraq War and he covered the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul. He sails, rides horses, SCUBA-dives and plays golf. He’s been husband, father, widower, and husband again. With these life experiences alone, Sandford could be a character in one of his own novels. 

If Masked Prey is a reader’s first introduction to the Prey series, it may inspire years of catching up on the adventures of Lucas Davenport. And then on to Virgil Flowers and Kidd.

Masked Prey by John Sandford
Genre: Thrillers
Author: John Sandford
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780525539540
Sherri Daley

Sherri Daley has been writing freelance for national and regional publications for many years, including MORE magazine, Car and Driver, and the New York Times. She is the author of a book about commodities traders and a ghostwriter for business motivational texts. As a freelancer, she has established herself as someone who will write about anything – from cancer treatments to the lives of Broadway stagehands to that new car smell, blueberry jam, and Joshua Bell’s violin. Her curiosity drives her to read about anything, too, and she’s eager to share what she likes with others. She says life’s too short to read a bad book. When she’s not reading, she’s tending her gardens in Connecticut where she lives with her cat and a cage of zebra finches, although she’d rather be living in Iceland. Visit her blog at sherridaley.com for more!

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