John Sandford is the writer I’ve been reading most over the past couple of months.

As I post, he’d published 34 books in the Prey series, featuring Lucas Davenport.

Eyes of Prey (1991) is only the 3rd book. And it’s very, very dark.

Davenport was depressed, maniacal, suicidal — not far removed from the serial killers he chased.

John Sandford:

Eyes of Prey was the third of the Lucas Davenport series, and, in my opinion, a genuinely nasty book. The first book, Rules of Prey, caught some thriller-fan attention because it was tough — a bad killer, and a bad cop chasing him. Even the Wall Street Journal liked it.

Then, in the second book, Shadow Prey, the bad guys got softer. In fact, the bad guys weren’t all that bad, really, but got killed anyway, which meant there was some moral ambiguity floating around in the punch bowl.

The doctor ordered a little more starkness in the third novel, and I got it with a couple of killers named Carlo Druze and Dr. Michael Bekker. Druze, though, was just a killer. Bekker was a raving blinkin’ maniac, and he’s the one that women seem to like.

John Sandford.org — Eyes of Prey

The ending is excellent. One of the best conclusions to a novel I’ve ever read.