PHANTOM PREY
John Sandford
Putnam Adult
Thriller
ISBN: 9780399155000

• Read an Excerpt

“Something wrong here, a cold whisper of evil… She couldn’t pin it down, but it was palpable…. The house was dark, except for [the] lamps…triggered by photocells at dusk…. Nothing else --- but the hairs on her forearms and the back of her neck stood upright. Some atavistic sense was picking up a threat.” She called out for her daughter, Frances, and for Helen the housekeeper. Silence. She grabbed the gun and went through the house, not knowing if she was being foolish or savvy. All clear. Then “she noticed the dark streaks on the wallpaper at the edge of the hall… Not knowing exactly why, she stepped over and touched them --- and felt the tackiness under her finger. Pulled her finger back and found a spot of crimson.” She called 911 and waited for the cops. She gave them her name, Alyssa Austin, and her tony address. They were not impressed with her, or the blood, or the fact that her daughter was missing.

This is the introduction to PHANTOM PREY, the 18th novel in John Sandford’s legendary Prey series, which features the head of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Lucas Davenport, a very smart veteran police officer with a sly wit and a way with people. He and his team have a great close rate and are currently staking out the apartment of “Siggy” Toms. He “had been the Twin Cities’s largest-volume cocaine dealer, pushing the stuff through his contacts in…real estate, stockbroking, and used car businesses. He had been netting two million a year, tax free…with money stashed all over the United States and Europe.” Two hours after his arrest, he was bailed out and within a very short time lost his “watchers” and disappeared. Siggy’s wife now lives in an apartment waiting for him to return. They have one child, and she is pregnant with their second. Thus, for three months, a rotation of the BCA team spent hours in a ratty apartment directly across from Heather’s domain.

The case is moving very slowly and is not especially difficult. But when Lucas goes home to his wife Weather, a surgeon, their son and their ward, his spouse gives him the lowdown on the “Austin case.” Alyssa Austin is an acquaintance of Weather’s, so of course they now know that her daughter is still missing. She needs help and wants Lucas to take a look at what is going on. The girl was a Goth who had a strange menagerie of friends. But even when the bodies of other Goths appear, no suspect comes up on the radar. She doesn’t know her daughter’s social circle but offers a few names, and he promises to take a look and not take over the investigation.

Just about this time, two new characters appear on the scene: Fairy and Loren, a couple of oversexed, violence-addicted psychopaths who have a hit list and plan their attacks with care. When they are with people, everyone is enthralled with Fairy, the name they gave her because she seems to be the personification of Tinkerbell. But these two are no Peter Pan and his delightful Tinker --- they are feral killers who are able to hide not only what they do but who they are. And so the brutal killings go on and the body count rises.

As if these goings-on were not enough, Lucas finds himself deeply drawn into the cases, and he must be careful about all of the politics involved. His sense of fairness is legendary in the different police districts, and he is able to head off any bad feelings when he tells them that he will share and help them if they do the same. Too many people are dying, and it’s more important to concentrate on that than to worry about territory.

Fairy is a very petite young woman who comes across as a little girl sweet as sugar. But no one really knows where she came from or where she goes when she disappears. This is very bothersome to Lucas, who feels she is almost taunting him. When he goes looking for her, she seems to hide. As one by one her “crowd” diminishes with each murder, Lucas’s instincts tell him that more is going on than meets the eye. He senses something altogether different from what appears on the surface is fomenting underneath the actions and tensions of the antagonists.

John Sandford is the pseudonym for John Camp, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who discovered he had a talent for crime fiction in the form of police procedurals. His reputation is cemented in his ability to render well-limned characters, keep his regulars fresh and growing, and create hot plots that draw readers in from the first sentence. His dialogue is perfectly pitched, and his style is approachable, making him a master storyteller. Sandford’s legion of faithful fans will surely enjoy the strange twists and dangerous turns he leads them through in PHANTOM PREY.

    --- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

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