Lethal Prey (2025) is 35th in the Lucas Davenport series. And one of the best.

For one thing, it includes Virgil Flowers — a far more likeable hero than Davenport.

For me, these books are “procedurals“. Long and frustrating investigations. The opposite of thrillers, where good guys are never hit by bullets and every scene is dramatic.

Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers join forces to track down a ruthless killer who will do whatever it takes to keep the past buried …

Doris Grandfelt, an employee at an accounting firm, was brutally stabbed to death… but nobody knew exactly where the crime took place.

Her body was found the next night, dumped among a dense thicket of trees along the edge of an urban park, eight miles east of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Despite her twin sister Lara Grandfelt’s persistent calls to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the killer was never found.

Twenty years later, Lara has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Confronted with the possibility of her own death, she’s determined to find Doris’s killer once and for all. Finally taking matters into her own hands, she dumps the entire investigative file on every true-crime site in the world and offers a $5 million reward for information leading to the killer’s arrest. Dozens of true-crime bloggers show up looking for both new evidence and clicks, and Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to review anything that might be a new lead.

JohnSandford.org

The 2024 edition of the Women’s Murder Club series had a promising start. Three separate threads:

• murder investigation of a billionaire San Francisco couple, one a former Olympic champion gymnast
• court case ➙ rape of a woman with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities)
• cyberattacks targeting hospitals

Sadly, all 3 interesting stories are resolved unsatisfactorily.

Some big fans of the series called this the worst yet. And there are some DUMB books. 😀

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It was nothing more than a one-night stand. Juliana Brody, a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, is rumored to be in consideration for the federal circuit, maybe someday the highest court in the land.

At a conference in a Chicago hotel, she meets a gentle, vulnerable man and in a moment of weakness has an unforgettable night with him. They part with an explicit understanding that this must never happen again.

But back home in Boston, it becomes clear that this was no random encounter. The man from Chicago proves to have an integral role in a case she’s presiding over–a sex-discrimination case that’s received national attention. Juliana discovers that she’s been entrapped, her night of infidelity captured on video.

Strings are being pulled in high places, a terrifying unfolding conspiracy that will turn her life upside down. But soon it becomes clear that personal humiliation, even the possible destruction of her career, are the least of her concerns, as her own life and the lives of her family are put in mortal jeopardy.

In the end, turning the tables on her adversaries will require her to be as ruthless as they are.

JosephFinder.com

Mortal Prey is 13th in the long Lucas Davenport series. And one of the best.

The bad guy is a woman.

Lucas clashed with her in a previous book ➙ Certain Prey.

Years ago, Lucas Davenport almost died at the hands of Clara Rinker, a pleasant, soft-spoken, low-key Southerner, and the best hitwoman in the business.

Now retired and living in Mexico, she nearly dies herself when a sniper kills her boyfriend, the son of a local druglord, and while the boy’s father vows vengeance, Rinker knows something he doesn’t: The boy wasn’t the target — she was — and now she is going to have to disappear to find the killer herself.

The FBI and DEA draft Davenport to help track her down, and with his fiancée deep in wedding preparations, he’s really just as happy to go — but he has no idea what he’s getting into.

For Rinker is as unpredictable as ever, and between her, her old bosses in the St. Louis mob, the Mexican druglord, and the combined, sometimes warring, forces of U.S. law enforcement, this is one case that will get more dangerous as it goes along. And when the crossfire comes, anyone standing in the middle won’t stand a chance….

This is the 3rd book I’ve tried by Korelitz.

I got through The Plot. But quit The Sequel at 60%. Quit The Latecomer at 50%.

Good writing. Critics love Korelitz. But — for me — the storytelling is WAY too slow. Nothing happens page after page.

Here’s one of those good reviews.

The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz review – witty, tightly plotted follow-up

The sequel to bestselling thriller The Plot takes the wife of the first novel’s protagonist and throws her into a satisfyingly twisty, literary satire

Cross Down: An Alex Cross and John Sampson Thriller (2023) was appealing in that — for the first time — John Sampson is the lead character. Alex Cross shot and hospitalized early in the book.

Unfortunately, the plot is even more absurd than usual. I was tempted to quit.

As the book opens, President Lucas Kent is meeting with General Wayne Grissom, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the White House. …

Violent attacks have been peppering the nation, and Kent and Grissom don’t know if foreign or domestic terrorists are to blame — or a combination of both. Their fear is that there will be bigger and deadlier ones, culminating in an unprecedented attack on the nation’s capital. …

Sampson goes on a clandestine mission in which no cavalry will be called upon to bail him out should it all go sideways. …

BookReporter Review