Hidden Prey by John Sandford

While the "who dunnit" is the meat n' potatoes of Sandfords writing...this one was a decent effort at trying to bring back the old "red scare" and soviet spys behind every corner. Yet it didnt really wow you like his other work because of the heavy handedness of the "spy" plotline...not really fun but not really bad guy vs good guy...just kidof hohum.

This is Sandford’s sixteenth novel involving his protagonist Lucas Davenport. This was not my favorite Davenport story because the investigation of the crime tended to get dragged out with a lot of incorrect decisions. The reader knows who the perpetrators are from the beginning, which is the way Sandford usually presents his stories, but these ‘wrong decisions’ only delay the inevitable and in my opinion makes for some uninteresting reading. Also, in this book, Davenport works alongside a Russian cop, or spy,--not sure which until later in the book—named Nadya Kalin, and I think Davenport was way more trusting of her than he should have been. She changed her story about herself several times and for whatever reason, that didn't seem to bother Davenport. With his previous intuitions, he would have simply refused to work with her any longer.

So, in this book, we find Lucas happily married to Weather and living in their “Big New House” with their new baby boy named Sam, and a state ward, whom we met in Sandford’s previous book, Naked Prey, named Letty West, a very precocious twelve year old little girl. Although she was a major player in Naked Prey, she is barely even mentioned in this one, but I’m sure Sandford is keeping her on for a future edition.

A Russian is murdered in a remote part of northern Minnesota near Lake Superior. A street woman named Trey is a witness to the murder. The murderer chases her and is about to kill her, but his gun jams. When he leaves, she goes to the dead man and finds $50,000 on him, which she takes. A week or so later, the murderer sees a woman whom he is convinced was the street woman, Trey. So he follows her and kills her by nearly decapitating her with a sharp wire. But it wasn’t Trey!

Turns out the dead man was a Russian and had very high Russian connections, so a Russian “cop” flies in from Moscow and Lucas flies up from Minneapolis. The FBI becomes involved as do the local police and lots of reporters. Not a whole lot is learned from the initial investigations, despite the high level of investigative power, but we readers soon know the shooter is young Carl Walther, grandson of Grandpa Walther, a communist spy who, during the war, committed some serious acts of atrocity, and who has been running a ring of families engaged in Russian “assistance” in northern Minnesota since the war ended. A fearless assassin in his own right, he is handing down his expertise to his grandson Carl, which includes random executions. So while there’s no doubt who is behind these murders, the clues Lucas and others pursue to uncover the spy ring and the murderer keep the story moving at a reasonable pace, although at one point I felt I had enough of ‘assumptions’.

And although Trey, the bag lady who had witnessed the first murder, played a minor role in the story, her initial exposure in the story was extremely well written, so it was a little disappointing that her involvement was very limited in solving the case, but in the end she was able to provide incontrovertible proof as to the killer.

Who would ever think of creating a story centered on a bunch of delusional old former spies who had not been active for years? Sandford that's who. Pretty difficult to swallow but a good read by a proven master storyteller.

I just bought and read ALL of the prey series in order and i can't wait for the next one. Sandford is as good as Trollope in conjuring up a believable, coherent community of characters and developing them with great skill. He succeeds in making the battered, lacking people who commit his crimes into real human beings and making their trajectories to destruction gripping. Moreover, he does not repeat his effects. And to quote Trollope, he understands the great principle of decorating a construction and never stoops to construct a decoration.

Lucas Davenport is one of the best series characters in this day and age. Even though I have most of this series in hardback, I find it rewarding to keep a Kindle in my pocket, and have probably bought most of what's on the library shelves. This series is timeless, from dial up phones and manual typewriters to smartphones and computers, it's the story that counts, and Sandford always delivers.

I didn't think this book was anywhere near as good as John Sanford's Prey series. So many times,I had to force myself to finish the book. This was definitely not a typical Sanford novel. I don't think I would recommend it to anyone. Very disappointed

Excellent
realistic
Hard to put down
Very easy to be visualized
James needs to settle down and be a real person again

Jeff carey

A good story but was not one that I could not put down. Too many story lines left unanswered, Del Capslock 's child is never mentioned again and the birth of Davenport's second daughter is ignored and the child is a toddler when we return to his life..
These details might not be pertinent to the major story but we are drawn into the lives of these detectives and would like to know the backstories. Also Sloan retires and except for the one instance is not heard from again. I have not yet read the last book, Silken Prey, so perhaps some of these issues are covered.