In the 10th installment of his popular Prey series, John Sandford (a.k.a. John Camp) pits his popular antihero, Lucas Davenport, against a pair of cunning killers unlike any he has encountered before.

Attorney Carmel Loan is preternaturally beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious. When she becomes infatuated with fellow barrister Hale Allen, she isn't going to let a little thing like his being married get in her way. A quick meeting with an ex-client sets up the hit on Hale's wife, Barbara. The professional killer, Clara Rinker, is one of the best in the business. Smart, attractive, with a gentle Southern drawl, no one would suspect her of being a top Mafia hit man... er, hit person. When she takes the Allen assignment, she figures it will be easy money for a day's work. But things go wrong from the beginning. Loan's ex-client made a tape of the meeting, and is shaking her down for money. Worse, the shooting of a witness--a cop--brings deputy inspector Lucas Davenport into the case. Somehow Davenport has not only linked Loan to the killing, but seems to have a lead on Rinker as well. Carmel and Clara team up to clean up the loose ends, which includes getting Davenport off their back by whatever means necessary.

Like all of Sandford's books, Certain Prey is a fast and furious ride. Fans of previous Prey books will find Davenport a little older, a little more wary, but no less sharp-witted and determined. Though parts of the plot may stretch the limits of credulity and the dialogue falls a little flat in places, this is still a wonderfully crafted thriller, possibly one of the best of 1999. Certain Prey cements Sandford's standing among such luminaries as James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, and Thomas Harris. --Perry Atterberry


From Publishers Weekly
For all his brooding, Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport lacks the charisma of, say, Robert B. Parker's Spenser or James Patterson's Alex Cross. The vast popularity of the Prey novels is probably due, then, not so much to this dependable hero as to Sandford's clever plotting, sure pacing and fully rounded villainsAas well as his smart prose. As if acknowledging his series' hero's unflashy demeanor, Sandford, in his 10th Prey book (after Secret Prey), allows two gleefully unrecalcitrant female antagonists to steal the show from Davenport. Clara Rinker's life as a murderer and mob hit woman begins when she is raped at age 16 and beats her assailant dead with a baseball bat. Years later, the other femme fatale, sociopathic Minneapolis defense lawyer Carmel Loan, hires Rinker to kill the wife of property attorney Hale Allen, whom Carmel desires; within days, she has Hale in bed. The storyline spools out as a cat-and-mouse among the women and Davenport, with the villainesses dominating the action, sometimes in tangential scenes. When the junkie who connected Carmel to Rinker blackmails the pair, for instance, Carmel tortures him with an electric drill as Rinker watches. The action doesn't always wash: Davenport tumbles to Carmel's involvement too easily, and Carmel's ferocious response to being framed by Davenport redefines the term "over the top." The play between the two women, who bond like sisters, is as fascinating as the courtship of venomous lizards, and the novel's background humAcomprised of various amatory rustlings, forensic and legal ploys, and maneuvers among cops, FBI agents, mobsters and the killersAis rich in authentic detail. While not the pseudonymous Sandford's best, (he is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp) this is a swift, satisfying entry in a series with long, muscular legs. 300,000 first printing; $300,000 ad/promo; BOMC main selection; author tour. (May) FYI: Mind Prey was adapted into a TV movie, John Sandford's Mind Prey, which aired on ABC in March .Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This time, Lucas Davenport's formidable opponent is a hitwoman. A BOMC main selection.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
This production of Sandford's latest in his popular series featuring Minneapolis police detective Lucas Davenport is vivid and entertaining. Davenport is facing a formidable adversary: hit woman Clara Rinker, hired by local attorney Carmel Loan to kill her lover's wife. With his pleasant and malleable voice, Eric Conger is at ease portraying women, regional intonations, and even (chillingly) the all-too-real screams of a torture victim. His enjoyment of his work shows in the banter between the cops and in the battles Davenport wages with Loan. Perfect pacing and on-target emotions enhance the suspense. Unsettling sound effects of the various weapons make the violence more immediate. Irresistible. M.A.M. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Sandford's Prey novels continue to attract widespread critical and popular acclaim. This tenth in the series won't change the pattern. Trying to avoid facing his empty personal life, enigmatic Minneapolis Deputy Police Chief Lucas Davenport is jolted out of the doldrums by the handiwork of professional hitwoman Clara Rinker, in town to do what she does best. Adding to his problems is glamorous defense attorney Carmel Loan, a clever and intimidating lawyer. When Davenport suspects an alliance between the two women, he soon faces two deadly enemies. Sandford keeps the level of suspense dizzyingly high as he shifts viewpoints between the women and Davenport, but what sets this story apart is his examination of the odd friendship between cold-blooded killers Clara and Carmel. Also stellar is his ability to show Clara's human side--to the point where readers may (guiltily) find themselves rooting for her. Jenny McLarin


From Kirkus Reviews
After ten thrillers in his series about Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport (Secret Prey, 1998, etc.), Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist John Camp, writing under his Sandford pen name, hits a home run over the curve of the earth as the brilliantly swift Certain Prey sinks a meat hook under the reader's jaw on page one and never lets up. In the opening scene, Clara Rinker, a 16-year-old runaway and nude dancer, is raped one night behind her St. Louie nudie bar and within two pages she has her revenge, battering her fat-trucker rapist's head in with a metal baseball bat. Her coolness about the murder leads her to become a hit woman for the Mafia. By age 20, reader-friendly Clara's making so much money as an assassin-for-hire that she goes to business school to figure out how best to use the cash she's been piling up under various names. When Minneapolis defense attorney Carmel Loan decides she wants a rival removed, she has a Mafia client hire Clara for her. Clara does the hit, killing Barbara Allen, but a cop witnesses the deed and is shot as well. Which draws in Lucas. Will the spiritedly attractive villain survive her encounter with Lucas and go on, like Hannibal Lecter, to enjoy an even greater feast of crimes? Top suspense. (Book-of-the-Month main selection) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Orlando Sentinel
One of his best...intriguing.


Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Pulse-pounding, page-turning excitement.


Publishers Weekly, April 19, 1999
"...this is a swift, satisfying entry in a series with long, muscular legs".


Book Description
The #1 New York Times Bestselling series featuring Lucas Davenport.

Of all the criminals that Lucas Davenport has hunted, none has been as frighteningly intelligent as the woman who's hunting him now.


Download Description
"When a wealthy socialite is murdered, the brilliant killer sets her sights on the one man who can solve the case--Lucas Davenport. "

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
May 1999

Certain Prey is John Sandford's 11th novel in ten years, and the tenth to feature hard-edged, charismatic homicide detective Lucas Davenport. Once again, Sandford has managed to avoid the traps of repetition and overfamiliarity that mar so many attempts to create an extended series and given us a shrewdly plotted, furiously paced novel that is as visceral and gripping as anything he has published to date.

The opening chapters find Davenport in unusually placid circumstances. He is financially secure, having developed and sold a lucrative line of computer simulation software; he is enjoying a brief, atypical period of complete celibacy; and he is increasingly isolated from the life of the streets by the endless bureaucratic demands of his role as deputy chief of the Minneapolis Police Department. Reality, of course, soon intervenes, and Davenport is pulled down from his ivory tower by a vicious, execution-style killing and its unexpected aftermath.

The killing is initiated by Carmel Loan, a sociopathic defense attorney with a million-dollar-a-year practice and a tendency to get what she wants. When she decides that she wants the handsome but unattainable husband of a wealthy local socialite named Barbara Allen, she hires the services of an out-of-town hitwoman named Clara Rinker, who successfully eliminates the inconvenient Allen but is also forced to shoot a Minneapolis police officer who stumbles onto the scene. From that point, events take on a life and momentum of their own.

First, a blackmailer with incriminating tapes ofCarmeldiscussing the proposed murder enters the picture, and Carmel and Clara join forces to eliminate the blackmailer and track down all existing copies of the tape. The resulting flurry of murders leads to a manhunt that pits Davenport, the Minneapolis PD, and numerous FBI agents against two desperate women who are ruthless and resourceful enough to give the combined forces of the law a serious run for their money.

While it is fascinating, as always, to watch the intuitive, equally ruthless Davenport bring his gamesman's instincts to bear on yet another complex investigation, the real heart of the novel is Sandford's striking presentation of the symbiotic relationship between his two killers and his gradual revelation of their essential characters. Clara Rink, a brisk, efficient professional hitwoman with dozens of murders to her credit, reveals an aspect of her nature that is surprisingly human, even vulnerable, while Carmel Loan, a pillar of the community with impeccable credentials, reveals a previously undiscovered taste for murder, mayhem, and conspiracy. It is Carmel who initiates most of the novel's more violent interludes, Carmel whose maneuverings lead to a final, bloody confrontation with Lucas Davenport.

Sandford — pseudonym of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp — writes clean, clear, highly kinetic prose that moves the action along at a pace only slightly short of the speed of light. The momentum of his writing galvanizes the narrative, enabling it to surmount and survive the occasional lapse in credibility (as, for example, when one of Carmel's dying victims scratches an important clue into his skin with his fingernails, a singularly unconvincing plot device I would never have expected from Sandford). Mostly, though, Certain Prey is an intelligent and authoritative thriller, a certified page-turner that rarely takes a questionable step. It may not exactly be art, but it is polished, professional entertainment of a high order and should more than meet the expectations of its author's large, and loyal, following.

—Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. He is currently working on a book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In Certain Prey, Davenport confronts an entirely new kind of adversary. Clara Rinker is a southerner, trim, pleasant, attractive - and the best hit woman in the business. She isn't showy, not one of those movie killers; she just goes quietly about her business, collects her money, and goes home. It's when she's hired for a job in Minnesota that things become complicated for her. A defense attorney wants a rival eliminated, and that's fine. But then a witness survives, the attorney starts acting weird, this big cop Davenport gets on her case, and loose ends begin popping up faster than a sweater unraveling. Clara hates loose ends, and knows of only one way to deal with them: You start cutting them off, one after another, until they're all gone. Lucas thinks the case is worrisome enough, but he has no idea of the toll it is about to take on him. For of the many criminals he has hunted during his life, none has been as efficient or as ferociously intelligent as the one who is about to start hunting him - and none knows so well what his weak spots are ... and how to penetrate them.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile - Melody A. Moxley

This production of Sandford's latest in his popular series featuring Minneapolis police detective Lucas Davenport is vivid and entertaining. Davenport is facing a formidable adversary: hit woman Clara Rinker, hired by local attorney Carmel Loan to kill her lover's wife. With his pleasant and malleable voice, Eric Conger is at ease portraying women, regional intonations, and even (chillingly) the all-too-real screams of a torture victim. His enjoyment of his work shows in the banter between the cops and in the battles Davenport wages with Loan. Perfect pacing and on-target emotions enhance the suspense. Unsettling sound effects of the various weapons make the violence more immediate. Irresistible. M.A.M.Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Dede Anderson - The Mystery Reader.com

In what may be his most intriguing Prey book in years, John Sandford delivers a brutal, witty, at times even gruesomely funny, but always entertaining, chase. The vivid and complex Clara and Carmel are worthy adversaries for Lucas' hard-earned crime solving skills ￯﾿ﾽ skills that, at times, seem almost too magical....The action is non-stop, the pace breathless and, best of all, the great Lucas Davenport has finally met his match.

Kirkus Reviews

After ten thrillers in his series about Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport (Secret Prey, 1998, etc.), Pulitzer Prize￯﾿ﾽwinning journalist John Camp, writing under his Sandford pen name, hits a home run over the curve of the earth as the brilliantly swift Certain Prey sinks a meat hook under the reader's jaw on page one and never lets up. In the opening scene, Clara Rinker, a 16-year-old runaway and nude dancer, is raped one night behind her St. Louie nudie bar and within two pages she has her revenge, battering her fat-trucker rapist's head in with a metal baseball bat. Her coolness about the murder leads her to become a hit woman for the Mafia. By age 20, reader-friendly Clara's making so much money as an assassin-for-hire that she goes to business school to figure out how best to use the cash she's been piling up under various names. When Minneapolis defense attorney Carmel Loan decides she wants a rival removed, she has a Mafia client hire Clara for her. Clara does the hit, killing Barbara Allen, but a cop witnesses the deed and is shot as well. Which draws in Lucas. Will the spiritedly attractive villain survive her encounter with Lucas and go on, like Hannibal Lecter, to enjoy an even greater feast of crimes? Top suspense. (Book-of-the-Month main selection)