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A review by donnek
Rules of Prey by John Sandford
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.