Book Review: Extreme Prey

Extreme Prey

In a way, reading about Lucas Davenport and his latest adventure is sort of refreshing. For here is a protagonist sans any inner demons to run away from, one who is ungodly rich, has a stable life post marriage, and a career going great guns. In short a character very different from the cop heroes we keep encountering in today's crime fiction. Which effectively also means lesser distractions that sidetrack the main story at hand. Isn't it all what we want from a thriller? To suck us right into the plot without having to bother about their personal problems? But what if that said thriller isn't sinewy and thrilling to begin with? Now, that's decidedly a problem.

Extreme Prey, John Sandford's 26th novel in the Prey series, opens with the Purdys silently hatching a plan to kill a Democratic presidential nominee simply because she stands for everything that's wrong with America these days. Are you screaming spoiler? Well you should, except as it turns out, it is not. So don't worry! It's rather about how Lucas, now out of his cop job and called back at Governor's behest to investigate the so-called conspiracy, figures it out and manages to foil their nefarious plans. Taken in that sense, the topical political thriller is a game of cat and mouse, and only a moderately engaging one at that, with characterisation forsaken for thrills and twists you keep waiting in vain.

P.S.: Now to the actual spoiler. If the Purdys were so hell bent on getting rid of one candidate and not the other, wouldn't it have made more sense to let them walk the state fair together? That way it would have made things a lot more exciting and interesting, just saying.