Invisible Prey (2008) is perhaps the BEST of the Lucas Davenport books I’ve read, so far.

The bad guys are interesting. Original.

Sandford starts every book with the bad guys.

The world of antique dealers fascinating.

What makes this book different than most murder mysteries is that it’s the villains themselves that end up solving the case.

In the richest neighbourhood of Minneapolis, two elderly women lie murdered in their home, killed with a pipe, the rooms ransacked, only small items stolen.

It’s clearly a random break-in by someone looking for money to buy drugs. But as he looks more closely, Davenport begins to wonder if the items are actually so small or the victims so random, if there might not be some invisible agenda at work here.

Gradually, a pattern begins to emerge — and it will lead Davenport to somewhere he never expected. Which is too bad, because the killers — and yes, there is more than one of them — the killers are expecting him.

I enjoyed seeing Kidd and Flowers make appearances.

Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. 

I read The Magic Mountain (1924) when I was young — not much appreciating it at the time.

Philosophical prose inspired by his wife’s letters from a Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, where she was being treated for respiratory disease.

His wife was one impressive person, Katia Mann. A secular Jew while Hitler was rising in power, she later converted to her husband’s Lutheranism.

She and Thomas had 6 children, all interesting characters. This was impressive, as well, because Thomas was a closeted Gay man.

Likely I wouldn’t have much interest in Thomas Mann but for my friend Brian taking a University elective course on him.

In 2025, I somehow downloaded an historical fiction account of his life ➙ The Magician by Colm Tóibín.

His life was even more dramatic than his novels.

His two elder children, Erika and Klaus, were flamboyantly unconventional – promiscuously bisexual, precociously talented as actors and writers, but too politically reckless and financially feckless to make careers for themselves. There were drugs. There were scandals. Eventually there was another, more devastating suicide – Klaus’s …

Erika Mann marries WH Auden, not for sex (they are both gay) but for a British passport …

He escapes (Hitler) first to Switzerland, moving on to the south of France, where he frequents the cafes where other German exiles gather – social democrats bickering with communists – and finally to the US. He watches the second world war from transatlantic safety …

Guardian review

His contemporary at Princeton, Einstein, adapted easily to American culture compared with Mann. Mann struggled.

The 23rd book in the entertaining Stone Barrington series is a good one.

Unnatural Acts (2012) find the saddest of sad sacks, Herbie Fisher, the hero of the tale.

These comedies require suspension of belief. Somehow Herbie is positioned to be the next Stone Barrington. 😀

Another surprise to me was finding Stone’s latest romance not killed off. That’s unusual.

When a hedge fund billionaire hires Stone Barrington to talk some sense into his wayward son, it seems like an easy enough job; no one knows the hidden sins and temptations of the ultra-wealthy better than Stone.

But as Stone and his erstwhile protégé, Herbie Fisher, probe deeper into the case—and an old one comes back to haunt him—he realizes that even he may have underestimated just how far some people will go to cover up their crimes, and commit new ones.

Not the best of the Stone Barrington books.

D.C. Dead (2011) follows up the previous book where sons of both Stone and his sidekick, Lt. Dino Bacchetti, NYPD, are gone to Yale.

President Will Lee calls the duo to Washington to investigate the murder of Emily Kendrick on the White House grounds.

I found the plot too absurd. Barrington sleeps with a series of women, most of whom are killed immediately after.

The clues are dumb. Dino and Stone perpetually at a loss to find the killer.

Skip this one.

A stand alone novel. Very good.

This one keeps you guessing.

Late afternoon, Virginia, and a woman is on the run. Her husband, a former U.S. Senator named Lincoln Bowe, has been missing for days. Kidnapped? Murdered? She doesn’t know, but she thinks she knows who’s involved, and why. And that she may be next.

Hours later, a phone rings in the pocket of Jacob Winter. An Army Intelligence veteran, Winter specializes in what he thinks of as forensic bureaucracy. Congress, the Pentagon, the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security — when something goes wrong, Winter kicks over rocks until he finds out what really happened. The White House is his main client, and the chief of staff is on the phone now.

If Bowe isn’t located soon, he is told, all hell will break loose.

JohnSandford.org

I did like Death by Dumpling (2018). The author, Vivien Chien, already has 11 books in the series as I post.

The 1st is far from a brilliant murder mystery. There’s no way I could have guessed the killer from the clues.

BUT I was charmed by Lana Lee, our investigator.

It’s a short, easy read. A cozy mystery. Almost Young Adult.

The last place Lana Lee thought she would ever end up is back at her family’s restaurant. But after a brutal break-up and a dramatic workplace walk-out, she figures that helping wait tables is her best option for putting her life back together. Even if that means having to put up with her mother, who is dead-set on finding her a husband.

Lana’s love life soon becomes yesterday’s news once the restaurant’s property manager, Mr. Feng, turns up dead―after a delivery of shrimp dumplings from Ho-Lee.

But how could this have happened when everyone on staff knew about Mr. Feng’s severe, life-threatening shellfish allergy?

Now, with the whole restaurant under suspicion for murder and the local media in a feeding frenzy―to say nothing of the gorgeous police detective who keeps turning up for take-out―it’s up to Lana to find out who is behind Feng’s killer order. . . before her own number is up.

The book ends with Lana heading off on a date. There’s hope for her.