This is considered one of the best of the Prey series. Number twenty-five.

Gathering Prey (2015) is a crime novel written by Pulitzer Prize winning writer John Sandford. …

Letty Davenport a young college girl receives a call from Skye a traveler she met briefly in San Francisco.

Remembering that Letty’s adoptive father is a detective she requests help in finding her companion Henry, who has just gone missing.

Soon Skye is missing as well and Detective Lucas Davenport decides to investigate further. He soon finds himself pursuing a drug dealer named Pilate in a chance that crosses state lines and exposes him to variety of sub cultures and their gatherings.

Though I couldn’t get into this author’s Nick Heller series, I’ve been reading some of his stand alone books.

The Fixer is another with an interesting plot.

It evolves out of corruption during Boston’s  Big Dig — the most expensive highway project in the United States, plagued by cost overruns, delays, leaks, design flaws, accusations of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal charges and arrests.

When former investigative reporter Rick Hoffman loses his job, fiancée, and apartment, his only option is to move back into–and renovate–the home of his miserable youth, now empty and in decay since the stroke that put his father in a nursing home.

As Rick starts to pull apart the old house, he makes an electrifying discovery—millions of dollars hidden in the walls.

It’s enough money to completely transform Rick’s life—and everything he thought he knew about his father.

Yet the more of his father’s hidden past that Rick brings to light, the more dangerous his present becomes. Soon, he finds himself on the run from deadly enemies desperate to keep the past buried, and only solving the mystery of his father—a man who has been unable to communicate, comprehend, or care for himself for almost 20 years—will save Rick…if he can survive long enough to do it.

This book is too long. Too slow. And nobody would make the obvious mistakes Rick Hoffman does … BUT I still recommend it.

You end up cheering for the poor guy. 😀

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.

Freida McFadden (born May 1, 1980) is the pen name of an American thriller author and practicing physician specializing in brain injury.

She began writing as a hobby, self-publishing starting 2013.

Her 2022 book The Housemaid was an international bestseller.

She’s known for the twists and turns in her plots. And unreliable narrators.

Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.

She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle occurs: she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn’t right …

Amazon