Field of Prey by John Sandford

Field of Prey: A Novel by John Sandford --- 392 pages

Field of Prey is Sandford's twenty-fourth novel in the Lucas Davenport series of crime novels. I got a definite sense while I was reading this book that Sandford is getting ready to wind down the Lucas Davenport series, and I was interested to find a recent interview in the Huffington Post (click HERE) that seems to confirm my hunch.

It's been a great series, compulsively readable, but Sandford seems ready to move on to new interests. I just hope he continues to write.

In Field of Prey Davenport and his team in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are facing one of their biggest challenges when two randy teenagers stumble on evidence indicating that a serial killer has been murdering women for over twenty years and dumping their bodies in an old cistern on an abandoned farm. The Bureau is working with local law enforcement in the rural county where the bodies were found to try to figure out how so many women could have disappeared without anybody noticing.

The killer has been clever; he's left almost no evidence that could be used to identify him other than the assumption that he must have a local connection since only someone familiar with the area could have known about the cistern. But that's not much to go on. The news media is going wild with the story, and the Governor (who has national political ambitions) needs this case solved fast. But Lucas knows this is not the kind of case that is going to be solved fast. And his biggest concern is making sure the killer doesn't add any new victims to his tally before they catch up with him,

Meanwhile the killer is enjoying watching the media feeding frenzy, and looking for his next trophy, when he notices a tall, rangy blonde, Catrin Mattsson, the investigating officer from the County Sheriff's Department, being interviewed on TV.

I read the book in one sitting and wound up staying up until 1 a.m. to finish it. Sandford is one of those authors who just sucks you in and you can't stop until you finish it. Warning: this book is not for the squeamish.