It’s always a treat when John Sandford returns to the character who made his career, Lucas Davenport, in his PREY series. Understandably, Sandford has been busy building up his new character, Virgil Flowers (who is awesome in his own ways, of course). But in Davenport’s case, our favorite detective has been away from the streets for a while. He’s been too busy with state work. He hasn’t been getting his hands truly dirty. And things have gotten a bit too jokey in his world.
And then, BURIED PREY comes down the pike and brings it all back to the basics.
Think about it. How much do you really know about Lucas Davenport? When we first meet him in RULES OF PREY, we know the building blocks of his personality, but we don’t really learn much about his history. In fact, everything we find out about him is present-day stuff. It’s the stuff that happened to him since we first saw him in a magazine shop years ago.
In his latest offering, Sandford brings us back to the case that got Davenport out of police blues and into plainclothes detective work. And we do get to learn a thing or two about him in this time. This is all triggered by the discovery of the corpses of two young girls in modern day Minneapolis. It turns out that these were two missing girls from the case in question, a case that everyone thought was closed back in the ‘Eighties. And now Davenport has to cast his mind back to his rookie days to remember the details and to think about the guy who might have done this crime.
And guess what? We get to see more of Sloan in action. It’s been a while since Sloan made his exit from the series, but at one time he was the second most important character, just after Davenport himself. The great interrogator does what he does best as he helps Davenport along with the initial investigation (and sadly bows out a little too soon). We also find out that Davenport knew Del Capslock (who was undoubtedly named after Sandford’s keyboard) a lot longer than we thought. He wasn’t introduced until the series was well underway, but it turns out he used to work with Davenport back in the day.
Not to say that the modern day characters don’t get any page-time. Shrake and Jenkins, the dynamic duo of ass-kickings, make the rounds, and even that fuckin’ Flowers shows his face in a few scenes.
And then there’s the bad news: a longtime favorite character is murdered in the process of this investigation. This, of course, brings back the Davenport of old: bloodthirsty and eager to kill for the right cause.
If you’ve given up on the PREY series, now is the time to come back. If you’re new to the series, don’t worry. You don’t have to read every book to get this one. But the rest of them are pretty awesome, and you should check them out. And if you’re a longtime Davenport fan . . . you probably already own this book. Good for you.
BURIED PREY
Author: John Sandford
Publisher: Putnam
390 pages
$27.95
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