شکار برهنه (لوکاس داونپورت، شماره ۱۴)

Lucas Davenport finds some changes in store — and a few of them are nasty — in this chilling novel by the number-one-bestselling author.After thirteen years and thirteen Prey novels, John Sandford's writing is as fresh as ever. His last book, "Mortal Prey," was "a model of the genre" (People) and "the cop novel of the year" (Kirkus Reviews). In the words of the Washington Post: "John Sandford does everything right."In "Naked Prey," he puts Davenport through change. His old boss, Rose Marie Roux, has moved up to the state level and taken Lucas with her. She creates a special troubleshooter job for him for cases that are too complicated or too politically touchy for others to handle. In addition, Lucas is married now and a new father, all of which is fine with him; he doesn't mind being a family man. But he is a little worried. For every bit of peace you get, you have to pay — and he's waiting for the bill.It comes in the form of two people hanging from a tree in the woods of northern Minnesota. What makes the situation particularly sensitive is that the bodies are that of a black man and a white woman, and they're naked. "Lynching" is the word everybody's trying not to say — but, as Lucas begins to discover, the murders are nothing like what they appear. There's much worse coming. SUMMARY: When twelve-year-old muskrat trapper Letty West stumbles on the naked bodies of Jane Warr and Deon Cash, deep in the snowy woods of northern Minnesota, it's more than another bizarre episode in her already unusual life, as Lucas Davenport discovers in this new outing in Sandford's popular series featuring the midwestern lawman who moonlights as a computer game designer. Lucas has a new wife, a new baby, and a new job as a political troubleshooter for his old boss Rose Marie Roux, but the blunt-spoken Davenport's instructions to hush the racially charged implications of what looks suspiciously like a lynching won't deter him from whomever left Warr and Cash twisting in the wind. The well-peopled plot, involving a hot car ring, an ex-nun who smuggles cancer drugs over the Canadian border, and the usual internecine wranglings between the FBI, the local cops, and Davenport, races to a satisfying denouement, but this time it's a little girl with a difficult past and an uncertain future who lingers in the reader's mind. Fortunately, Sandford comes up with an ending that makes it all but certain that his fans will meet her again. Meanwhile, all the author's usual trademarks are on display--excellent writing, an interesting scenario, and terrific pacing. --Jane Adams ϡ쯦랠