John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport series continues to grow, thrive and prosper. The same could be said of Davenport himself, who is fitting very well into his role as a maverick federal marshal. In TWISTED PREY, Sandford uses Davenport’s position as a way to revisit characters and plots --- to great and entertaining effect --- by putting him in the path of one of his deadliest and most unstable adversaries.

If you read 2013’s SILKEN PREY, you will remember Taryn Grant, the psychotic senator from Minnesota who literally got away with murder in her campaign to unseat the incumbent, Porter Smalls. None of the principals --- Grant, Smalls or Davenport --- have forgotten the others, for entirely different reasons. Davenport chafes against the knowledge that Grant killed people on his watch and that he was never able to prove it. Smalls, even though he was subsequently elected to the other open Minnesota Senate seat, still has bitter feelings for being unseated by Grant through her canny use of political dirty tricks. Grant simply can’t stand being in the same universe as Smalls, and is no fan of Davenport because he had the nerve to get in her way.

"[A] terrific plot and a touch or two of political incorrectness indisputably make TWISTED PREY one of Sandford’s best to date, with an ending that is as satisfying as any you are likely to read this year."

It’s not enough that Grant is in the Senate and has a seat on the intelligence committee. Smalls is in the way of her grander ambition --- to be sitting in the big chair in the White House --- so he has to go. Grant uses some of her newly found contacts through her committee seat to make that happen. Smalls becomes a target, but an effort to take him out due to a traffic accident --- one for which it appears he may have been responsible --- fails miserably and tragically.

Smalls calls Davenport, insisting that the incident was a deliberate attempt to kill him and that Grant is responsible. This sets off one of the better crime scene investigation scenes that I have read in recent memory. A great deal of the entertainment here is watching Grant go nuts when her plans don’t go the way she intended. Never one to take failure lying down, she decides to switch from “charge!” to “follow me” mode, taking matters into her own hands. She is more than capable of it, and her involvement places Davenport, as well as Smalls, in danger. Meanwhile, Grant’s scheming unpredictably releases a wild card into the mix, which ultimately affects the book’s conclusion and just might become fodder for another story down Davenport’s long and wonderful road.

Another interesting aspect of TWISTED PREY is that the bad guys keep screwing up royally. It isn’t due to lack of trying. Their basic plans are simple enough at times, ingenious in others. But as we know from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Grant’s failures cause her to dig herself in more deeply, and Davenport is more than happy to provide a new shovel. Davenport may not be Sherlock Holmes, but he is canny, dogged and determined, and is able to engage in investigative broken-field running --- not to mention manipulativeness --- when the occasion calls for it.

Those elements --- a terrific plot and a touch or two of political incorrectness --- indisputably make TWISTED PREY one of Sandford’s best to date, with an ending that is as satisfying as any you are likely to read this year.