I am participating in several reading challenges, one being the 100 Bestsellers List. Here is my review of Easy Prey by John Sandford. This book is #11 in a series of twenty-seven (so far) novels starring Lucas Davenport, a police officer and war games designer. Interestingly, all twenty-seven books include the word “Prey” in the title. Does that tell you anything about the series? In Easy Prey, the body count mounts quickly.
This post does not contain spoilers.
Police Procedural
Easy Prey is a police procedural novel, which means that the murder mystery is solved by those trained to solve murders, the police, and the story is heavy on the police process. This is a new type of mystery for me to read and, so far, I like it. As Roberta mentioned in her Writer’s Review, this book has a lot of characters, but I’ve been able to follow along and keep them all straight without too much difficulty. I was struck by the amount of detail Sandford gives for each character. For example, in Chapter 6 we are introduced to Lapstrake, a police officer from the Intelligence division.
Lapstrake was a bland, twenty-something guy with a home haircut who wore blue Sears work pants and a blue shirt that said “Cairn’s Glass” on the back.
A blue shirt wasn’t descriptive enough. Sandford added “Cairn’s Glass” to the back of it. I had to wonder why Cairn’s Glass, if that would be significant to the story later on, but it did succeed in making Lapstrake’s character more memorable.
Appreciation of Women
Lucas Davenport is not your typical police officer. For one thing, he’s wealthy; he invented board games to supplement his police income, which turned into computer games and led to his own company selling simulations to law enforcement. For another, Davenport has an innate appreciation of women, especially beautiful women. He notices and responds to small things about women that seem atypical of a middle-aged male, let alone a street-hardened cop.
Read the rest of my review over on It’s A Mystery Blog.