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

At the beginning of this book series, Lucas Davenport — the good guy — wasn’t much better than the criminals he chased.

But over time he became increasingly likeable.

Night Prey (2024) is only 6th in the series. But Davenport is already showing signs of humanity.

State Investigator Meagan Connell believes that Minneapolis has a serial killer on its hands, a killer who has stepped up the frequency of his attacks. Connell is dying of cancer and is determined to catch the killer in the few weeks she has left.

Davenport is called in for his expertise in serial murder.

The BAD GUY this time is an elusive cat burglar obsessed with a woman.

It’s a gritty police procedural trying to find the villain.

Somehow I missed this 1982 children’s book and ALL the adaptations.

In fact, it’s my 1st Roald Dahl book.

Surprising, since he ranks amongst the world’s best-selling fiction authors with sales estimated at over 300 million.

The BFG (short for The Big Friendly Giant) … was ranked number 88 among all-time best children’s novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a US monthly.

Sophie, an eight-year-old girl in an orphanage, befriends a mysterious Giant, the BFG.

The 24-foot-tall giant carries her away to the land of the Giants, a place not on any map.

The BFG is a vegetarian. But his 9 neighbours are much bigger and stronger giants, who all happily eat humans every night.

Sophie persuades the BFG to approach the Queen of England for help with the other giants. They plot to imprison the hungry man-eating giants in a deep pit.

I was most entertained by Dahl’s inventive, playful use of language. He invented over 500 new words by scribbling down his words before swapping letters around and adopting spoonerisms and malapropisms.

Horror stories for kids? Yep.

His obituary in The Times was titled “Death silences Pied Piper of the macabre“.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Another intense murder mystery.

16th in the Lucas Davenport series.

Very good as are most of the Sandford novels.

The first body is of a young woman, found on a Minneapolis riverbank, her throat cut, her body scourged and put on display. Whoever did this, Lucas knows, is pushed by brain chemistry, there is something wrong with him. This isn’t a bad love affair.

The second body is found a week later, in a farmhouse six miles south. Same condition, same display — except this time it is a man. Nothing to link the two murders, nothing to indicate that the killings end here. …

A suspect emerges early: a man recently released from a prison hospital and who now seems to have cut himself free from his court-imposed ankle bracelet and disappeared. But the more Lucas investigates, the more he wonders: Is this really the man? Could he really have done this all by himself? And where has he gone to, anyway?

And meanwhile, a predator waits….