gathering prey

gathering prey
lucas davenport #25
john sandford
fiction/mystery/thriller/suspense
gp putnam's sons
published 2015

They call them Travelers.  They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes - they just like to stay on the move.  And now somebody is killing them.

Lucas Davenport's adopted daughter, Letty, is home from college when she gets a phone call from a woman Traveler she'd befriended in San Francisco.  The woman thinks somebody's killing her friends, she's afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing.  She's hiding out in North Dakota, and she doesn't know what to do.

Letty tells Lucas she's going to get her, and, though he suspects Letty's getting played, he volunteers to go with her.  When he hears the woman's story though, he begins to think there's something in it.  Little does he know.  In the days to come, he will embark upon an odyssey through a subculture unlike any he has every seen, a trip that will not only put the two of them in danger - but just may change the course of his life.

Another freaking winner by John Sandford.  I wait in anticipation hoping that when Letty finishes college and becomes whatever career badass she's going to be Sandford will give her her own series.  Please, please give Letty her own series.

Anyway, lots of crazies here in Gathering Prey and Lucas has kind of gone off the rails.  It started with the events in Field of Prey and we've seen it before throughout the series.  Lucas needs something.....but he's not sure what yet.  All he knows that what he has now isn't working.  So he puts everything into finding these killers.  But about 98% is born from a kind of stupid thing Letty does that seemed slightly out of character, (but then again not) that sends Lucas into a protective father rage.  It's hard to talk about without giving too much away.

The humor is always there, the reality of these people.  The instances that make them seem like real people that you could encounter or know in this life.  After a bad experience Lucas tells Letty he's going to call Weather.  Letty warns, 'She's gonna scream,' to which Lucas replies, 'Yeah, well - it's her turn.'  And later when Lucas is vaguely outlining his plans to Weather she says to him, 'All right, if you say so.  I reserve the right to smirk when it all goes wrong.'

Sandford's writing is just so perfect.  And the problem with that is for awhile after I've finished a Prey or Virgil Flowers novel everything else I pick up to read just kind of sucks.  So I have to take a break from reading for a bit.  I've said I was thinking of restarting the series and I wonder if now is a good time to start.