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lilyantan's review against another edition
2.0
Lucas Davenport, Investigator Extraordinaire and lover of women, is tasked with bringing down the newest killer in town. The Maddog, a standard mommy issues book personality, can only get a hard on if he's stabbing a woman and watching her die, fun. Will Davenport get the Maddog in time?! cue 90's thriller music
This book is as old as I am and unlike me, it has not aged well.
Lucas is clearly John Sandford's way of living out his fantasy life on paper. Hot shot officer, the ONLY detective in town who can solve the case, wanted by every single female he lays eyes on, drives a Porsche... screaming 90's male mid-life crisis dream.
Get your popcorn and join me on our ride through the 90's mentality.
First up, we have entrapping a man by getting pregnant! Everyone does it! Don't you? Lols.
Moving right along to sleeping with a victim on your case and lying to her about your baby mama. Totally normal. Nothing unprofessional to see here.
Our final stop is... "The GAYS". Mentioned on several occasions and always with a "THE". A murderer who hates women? MUST BE ONE OF THE GAYS
I wasn't offended by this book, it was released in 1989.... come on. It was just amusing how outdated it was. Even on the murder case front. Things like having to call someone's home phone to make sure they aren't in and not having mobiles to hack into and find out where the killer is.
I didn't like this book but I didn't hate it either, it's fast paced and there could be potential. Curious to know if his recent books have been upgraded?
This book is as old as I am and unlike me, it has not aged well.
Lucas is clearly John Sandford's way of living out his fantasy life on paper. Hot shot officer, the ONLY detective in town who can solve the case, wanted by every single female he lays eyes on, drives a Porsche... screaming 90's male mid-life crisis dream.
Get your popcorn and join me on our ride through the 90's mentality.
First up, we have entrapping a man by getting pregnant! Everyone does it! Don't you? Lols.
Moving right along to sleeping with a victim on your case and lying to her about your baby mama. Totally normal. Nothing unprofessional to see here.
Our final stop is... "The GAYS". Mentioned on several occasions and always with a "THE". A murderer who hates women? MUST BE ONE OF THE GAYS
I wasn't offended by this book, it was released in 1989.... come on. It was just amusing how outdated it was. Even on the murder case front. Things like having to call someone's home phone to make sure they aren't in and not having mobiles to hack into and find out where the killer is.
I didn't like this book but I didn't hate it either, it's fast paced and there could be potential. Curious to know if his recent books have been upgraded?
infectedarea's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
bickleyhouse's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I'm not sure if this is John Sandford's first book or not, as he had two titles released in 1989. However, I believe it is the first novel written under this name, as the other title, I'm told, was released under his real name, which is John Roswell Camp. But this series took off like wildfire, and it is easy to see why.
It's a little slow beginning, as we get to know detective Lucas Davenport, but once the story gets under way, it moves pretty quickly, and I was able to finish this almost 500 page book in three days. As happens so often, I was pretty much unable to put this book down for about the last fourth of the book. It's a gripping detective story with plenty of twists and turns and "Oh, crap!!" moments included.
Davenport lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm not sure I've ever read a story set there, so that's unique for me. A murder is committed that has sexual aspects to it. We are introduced to a killer who is chilling in his mindset and operation. And Sandford does a great job of getting us into his head (scary enough on its own). Davenport sets out to catch this killer, who kills again and again, but makes a mistake in one case and his "prey" gets away. This person eventually becomes instrumental in the capture of the killer.
I love the way Davenport operates, although his behavior would get him into really big trouble in the twenty-first century. It will be interesting, as I continue the series, to see how he has evolved as acceptable behavior has changed over the years. He lies constantly to the women in his life, and has no qualms at all with sleeping with more than one at a time. He also plays media personalities off of each other. But it's also part of his plan to get under the skin of the killer.
There are some quirks in the story that really show the age of it. More than once, the detective calls someone (he is pretty sure that they aren't home), and lets it keep ringing for twenty or thirty times. I guess answering machines weren't so common in 1989, and phones didn't go straight to voice mail after five or six rings like they do now.
I really enjoyed this story and it's a pretty darned good first novel, in my opinion. Kept me on the edge of my seat for the last 100 pages or so, and the final sequence was thrilling. I definitely plan on continuing in the "prey" series.
I recommend this book for anyone who likes crime thrillers and detective novels. But be prepared for some graphic details.
It's a little slow beginning, as we get to know detective Lucas Davenport, but once the story gets under way, it moves pretty quickly, and I was able to finish this almost 500 page book in three days. As happens so often, I was pretty much unable to put this book down for about the last fourth of the book. It's a gripping detective story with plenty of twists and turns and "Oh, crap!!" moments included.
Davenport lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm not sure I've ever read a story set there, so that's unique for me. A murder is committed that has sexual aspects to it. We are introduced to a killer who is chilling in his mindset and operation. And Sandford does a great job of getting us into his head (scary enough on its own). Davenport sets out to catch this killer, who kills again and again, but makes a mistake in one case and his "prey" gets away. This person eventually becomes instrumental in the capture of the killer.
I love the way Davenport operates, although his behavior would get him into really big trouble in the twenty-first century. It will be interesting, as I continue the series, to see how he has evolved as acceptable behavior has changed over the years. He lies constantly to the women in his life, and has no qualms at all with sleeping with more than one at a time. He also plays media personalities off of each other. But it's also part of his plan to get under the skin of the killer.
There are some quirks in the story that really show the age of it. More than once, the detective calls someone (he is pretty sure that they aren't home), and lets it keep ringing for twenty or thirty times. I guess answering machines weren't so common in 1989, and phones didn't go straight to voice mail after five or six rings like they do now.
I really enjoyed this story and it's a pretty darned good first novel, in my opinion. Kept me on the edge of my seat for the last 100 pages or so, and the final sequence was thrilling. I definitely plan on continuing in the "prey" series.
I recommend this book for anyone who likes crime thrillers and detective novels. But be prepared for some graphic details.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Violence
katemoxie's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
5.0
topdragon's review against another edition
4.0
I’ve been meaning to try this series for years now, especially since I joined Goodreads and been on the receiving end of much pestering from my GR friends. Of course that’s what friends are for and I am thankful that all of your pestering finally reached critical mass and pushed me over the edge.
I’ve read many a serial killer novel over the years and while I usually still find them at least somewhat interesting, they have tended to blur together in my memory. So to stand out from the crowd I need several key ingredients in any new ones I pick up. Foremost, there needs to be a unique main character. Lucas Davenport certainly fulfills that requirement. Instead of a cliched down and out alcoholic sleuth we have a tough police Lieutenant with a get-it-done reputation. A bit of a rogue and most definitely a womanizer, he likes nothing better than a new perfectly-tailored suit. He is also a man after my own heart: a gamer and even a game designer and has become quite wealthy through a number of pursuits. He is not above using other people, even innocent people to obtain his goals and even more importantly, he doesn’t just bend the rules, he flat out breaks them. He is a vigilante policeman who believes the ends justify the means and doesn’t bat an eye at planting evidence or falsifying facts to make sure the bad guy goes down. Such a character is not always sympathetic but somehow, this author manages to make him so, nonetheless. And that, my friends, makes this book, and presumably, this series, a worthwhile read.
The setting is the twin cities of Minneapolis/St Paul, also unique to my experience. I get tired of these sorts of novels always taking place in New York, LA or Washington DC. As a reporter and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press for many years, John Sandford (real name John Camp) brings an air of authenticity to this locale and the plot in general. He knows what a crime scene looks like and how the press, the cops, and the public at large react to such things. Fortunately, he doesn’t “write like a journalist”. This is a gripping page-turner of a book.
There is not much of a downside here except for the feeling I got at the end that Davenport himself never changed throughout the novel. He didn’t grow or change in any measurable way. I suspect that is not the case over the course of the series otherwise there is no way it could be so successful after 25 novels and still going strong. The bad guy was intelligent, yes, and is known to the reader from near the beginning of the book (this is a thriller, not a mystery) but for a “smart” fellow he made plenty of mistakes. Thankfully, the plot’s realism depicted luck as a very real part of the way cops catch (or don’t catch) bad guys and here, the police’s lucky and unlucky breaks matched those of the villain so the story absolutely worked.
I’ll be reading more of this series of course and I am intrigued by John Sandford’s style enough to investigate his other series as well.
I’ve read many a serial killer novel over the years and while I usually still find them at least somewhat interesting, they have tended to blur together in my memory. So to stand out from the crowd I need several key ingredients in any new ones I pick up. Foremost, there needs to be a unique main character. Lucas Davenport certainly fulfills that requirement. Instead of a cliched down and out alcoholic sleuth we have a tough police Lieutenant with a get-it-done reputation. A bit of a rogue and most definitely a womanizer, he likes nothing better than a new perfectly-tailored suit. He is also a man after my own heart: a gamer and even a game designer and has become quite wealthy through a number of pursuits. He is not above using other people, even innocent people to obtain his goals and even more importantly, he doesn’t just bend the rules, he flat out breaks them. He is a vigilante policeman who believes the ends justify the means and doesn’t bat an eye at planting evidence or falsifying facts to make sure the bad guy goes down. Such a character is not always sympathetic but somehow, this author manages to make him so, nonetheless. And that, my friends, makes this book, and presumably, this series, a worthwhile read.
The setting is the twin cities of Minneapolis/St Paul, also unique to my experience. I get tired of these sorts of novels always taking place in New York, LA or Washington DC. As a reporter and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press for many years, John Sandford (real name John Camp) brings an air of authenticity to this locale and the plot in general. He knows what a crime scene looks like and how the press, the cops, and the public at large react to such things. Fortunately, he doesn’t “write like a journalist”. This is a gripping page-turner of a book.
There is not much of a downside here except for the feeling I got at the end that Davenport himself never changed throughout the novel. He didn’t grow or change in any measurable way. I suspect that is not the case over the course of the series otherwise there is no way it could be so successful after 25 novels and still going strong. The bad guy was intelligent, yes, and is known to the reader from near the beginning of the book (this is a thriller, not a mystery) but for a “smart” fellow he made plenty of mistakes. Thankfully, the plot’s realism depicted luck as a very real part of the way cops catch (or don’t catch) bad guys and here, the police’s lucky and unlucky breaks matched those of the villain so the story absolutely worked.
I’ll be reading more of this series of course and I am intrigued by John Sandford’s style enough to investigate his other series as well.
sleepytimebooks's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.0
donnek's review against another edition
4.25
So hubby has been recommending this series to me for YEARS!!! However, it wasn’t until GR friend, Lisa said, “Even when they're beaten and shot up, they still manage to get me to laughing!”. She was referring to Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers. Anyway, she had me at laughing and they sounded like my kind of guys and I finally added this installment to my list. I may check out Virgil Flowers (which is another one hubby has been recommending) at some later date. They seem to go hand in hand, but I also noticed a Letty Davenport series; I don’t know who she is but I’m sure I’ll find out.
Right off the bat, Lucas Davenport sounded like an “interesting” guy. He’s a decorated cop with a “complicated” history, and as such, he gets to work on pretty much whatever he wants down in his dungeon lair in the basement of the police department. He’s a rich, successful, game developer in his spare time making him a total geek, albeit a rather sexy one who doesn’t lack for female attention and company. Oh, and his childhood, best friend is a nun and fellow gamer, as well as a psychologist, and who is also a member, along with Lucas, of a local gaming club that meets once a week to engage in gaming wars. Like I said, total geek !!!
The book summary is pretty worthless and just basically introduces the primary storyline that there is a crazy killer in Minneapolis, that is supposedly brilliant. The killer leaves notes declaring his kill rules on the dead bodies of his attractive female victims that are all petite women with dark features and uses the same MO every time. Not sure how “brilliant” that is since one of his rules is “Never follow a discernible pattern”, but whatever.
Based on the account of the one surviving victim, who fought back and ran him off (YOU GO GIRL!!!), Lucas gets a pretty accurate profile pretty early in the story. From pretty much the get-go, the reader knows who the killer is too. This is ok, sometimes, because now I don’t have to spend the rest of the story trying to figure out “whodunit”, and I can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Lucas also has a lot of CI’s all over town and is constantly on the lookout for making new ones with the people he meets. None of this is a spoiler since it all happens in the first 20% of the story.
The story flips back and forth between Lucas and the killer, Louis. Lucas and Louis are now playing games with each other, which leads to more dead bodies piling up. It's well into the second half, the whole story just gets a little too disturbing, fortunately, the end comes pretty quick after that in a blaze of glory. At this point it becomes pretty clear (at least to me) how Lucas’s history became so “complicated”. I hope Sandford reveals more of that in later installments.
I loved Sandford’s author’s notes at the end (I always read those), where he said,
”Cops don’t act like Lucas Davenport; they’d be fired or in prison if they did. They aren’t rich, they don’t drive Porsches, most can give a rat’s @$$ about fashion. Lucas Davenport does all of that. Nothing better, Lucas feels, than a really good-looking new suit. He’s like that because he’s a cross between a cop and a movie star. I wanted him to be a star. I wanted him to be different. I wanted him to be a mean, tough cop that women liked. Listen, a lot of writing comes out of you in a burst, out of your heart and your experience, but there’s a good deal of calculation too. I wanted to make people like Lucas Davenport. When it came to thrills, if I had to make a choice between a good thrill and good police procedure, I didn’t hesitate to throw procedure overboard”.
And that folks is why it is called FICTION. So, if you’re the kind of reader whose enjoyment of the story is contingent on the believability of the story, then this is not the series for you. Fortunately, I am not one of those types of readers and for me, the crazier, the better sometimes, as long as the ending isn’t a hot mess. I prefer endings wrapped up into a nice little bow. This was Sandford’s second attempt at writing fiction and it was a pretty good one. His characterization was pretty good and the pacing was pretty fast, something was always happening. The storyline was interesting and the writing pretty decent. I believe Sandford accomplished what he set out to do with this book. I loved the ending! I’m looking at an overall rating of 4.25. l definitely be continuing with the series.
Right off the bat, Lucas Davenport sounded like an “interesting” guy. He’s a decorated cop with a “complicated” history, and as such, he gets to work on pretty much whatever he wants down in his dungeon lair in the basement of the police department. He’s a rich, successful, game developer in his spare time making him a total geek, albeit a rather sexy one who doesn’t lack for female attention and company. Oh, and his childhood, best friend is a nun and fellow gamer, as well as a psychologist, and who is also a member, along with Lucas, of a local gaming club that meets once a week to engage in gaming wars. Like I said, total geek !!!
The book summary is pretty worthless and just basically introduces the primary storyline that there is a crazy killer in Minneapolis, that is supposedly brilliant. The killer leaves notes declaring his kill rules on the dead bodies of his attractive female victims that are all petite women with dark features and uses the same MO every time. Not sure how “brilliant” that is since one of his rules is “Never follow a discernible pattern”, but whatever.
Based on the account of the one surviving victim, who fought back and ran him off (YOU GO GIRL!!!), Lucas gets a pretty accurate profile pretty early in the story. From pretty much the get-go, the reader knows who the killer is too. This is ok, sometimes, because now I don’t have to spend the rest of the story trying to figure out “whodunit”, and I can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Lucas also has a lot of CI’s all over town and is constantly on the lookout for making new ones with the people he meets. None of this is a spoiler since it all happens in the first 20% of the story.
The story flips back and forth between Lucas and the killer, Louis. Lucas and Louis are now playing games with each other, which leads to more dead bodies piling up. It's well into the second half, the whole story just gets a little too disturbing, fortunately, the end comes pretty quick after that in a blaze of glory. At this point it becomes pretty clear (at least to me) how Lucas’s history became so “complicated”. I hope Sandford reveals more of that in later installments.
I loved Sandford’s author’s notes at the end (I always read those), where he said,
”Cops don’t act like Lucas Davenport; they’d be fired or in prison if they did. They aren’t rich, they don’t drive Porsches, most can give a rat’s @$$ about fashion. Lucas Davenport does all of that. Nothing better, Lucas feels, than a really good-looking new suit. He’s like that because he’s a cross between a cop and a movie star. I wanted him to be a star. I wanted him to be different. I wanted him to be a mean, tough cop that women liked. Listen, a lot of writing comes out of you in a burst, out of your heart and your experience, but there’s a good deal of calculation too. I wanted to make people like Lucas Davenport. When it came to thrills, if I had to make a choice between a good thrill and good police procedure, I didn’t hesitate to throw procedure overboard”.
And that folks is why it is called FICTION. So, if you’re the kind of reader whose enjoyment of the story is contingent on the believability of the story, then this is not the series for you. Fortunately, I am not one of those types of readers and for me, the crazier, the better sometimes, as long as the ending isn’t a hot mess. I prefer endings wrapped up into a nice little bow. This was Sandford’s second attempt at writing fiction and it was a pretty good one. His characterization was pretty good and the pacing was pretty fast, something was always happening. The storyline was interesting and the writing pretty decent. I believe Sandford accomplished what he set out to do with this book. I loved the ending! I’m looking at an overall rating of 4.25. l definitely be continuing with the series.
glowe2's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0