Second in the Lucas Davenport thriller series set in Minneapolis and revolving around Lucas Davenport. My TakeThis one is so disgusting. It makes me so angry that cops would abuse their power like this. It’s bad enough that any man would do this to a young girl, but for cops…it’s just worse…arghhhh! Even more infuriating, if that is at all possible, is that the police dispatcher announces the location of victims for other cops to abuse. There are no words for how angry this makes me.It’s almost a tour of Lucas’ life as he escorts Lily around Minneapolis as they work to dig up hints, clues, ideas on who’s killing all these people. I do like this twist on a cop’s life. One who creates games: war games, fantasy games, role-playing games. And Sandford provides lots of background on how Lucas approaches this hobby of his. He also shows up a dirty cop. One who breaks in to people’s homes, twists arms. There is a lot I like about Lucas, and there’s a lot I don’t like about him. He lies, he cheats, he manipulates. Yet, he is also honest. He doesn’t set people up to permanently hurt them, just to get to the end result with the right people, the guilty people, arrested. He also seduces women into sleeping with him simply because he’s attracted to them, whether they’re married or not. He’s going to end up paying big for his actions in this one. Yeah, that fire fight at the end, with the baby and Jennifer in danger, that’s bad, but Lucas has already set himself up for the fail with Jennifer.Hoo-ee, Lily is a piece of work. All condescending, having to interact with these shitkickers in the outback of the U.S. She’s so pushy and overweening, and then she gets taken down a few pegs. Her husband has a similar reaction, and I loved Lucas’ response to David’s fears and angry denouncements. It’s sad that this is the only recourse the Crows can see. It’s a circular argument about the Native Americans. Whites took so much from them, kept them penned in on reservations with nothing, tossed them scraps, left them with no dignity, and they have so little pride left. The traumas the families go through whether they’re self-imposed by parents who shouldn’t be reproducing or the system which doesn’t care.Well, as opposed to my usual niggles at the writer, this time I’m irritated with some of the characters’ choices, such as Barbara’s argument. She knew damn well what Shadow was up to. Then there’s that mayor---he’ll swing whichever way he can look good, jerk. Then Jennifer gets a taste of what she’s dished out in the past when she finally gets to experience the invasive nature of the press when she’s injured. Sandford tosses in some metaphysical scenes with the bones of dead Sioux crying out, descriptions of conditions on the res, and he doesn’t hold back on the negative side of how some Indians react to life. I’m torn between wondering if the bones bit was gratuitous or whether it was essential so we understand where the Crows are coming from…or even both.What is with these cops who have to pee on a case to make it theirs. So arrogant they couldn’t be bothered to learn anything about the scene. I do love how Daniel turned it around. That jerk FBI guy who screwed it all up…although, it was an essential to get the best results for the good guys---and I don’t mean the cops.The StoryThe spark was rape, years ago. In the years since, the anger and frustration has grown over white intolerance, the power they hold over Native Americans. No more.Lucas’ contacts, his network won’t be much help on this. Too many Indians see this as payback for what they’ve had to suffer.The CharactersLucas Davenport is a lone detective working Intelligence, working networks of people, set on special cases for his intelligence and his popularity with the press. He’s independently wealthy from his game designing that he can afford that Porsche. Jennifer Carey with TV3, although she’s taken a partial leave of absence, is his girlfriend and the mother of his daughter, Sarah. Lucas keeps asking her to marry him; she keeps saying no. Elle Kruger, Sister Mary Joseph, is a woman Lucas knew as a kid and now she’s a psychologist.Other cops includeJim Wentz is with Homicide, Harry Meany is a shift commander, Harrison Sloan, Captain Quentin Daniel is the chief of police, Frank Lester is the deputy chief for investigations, Harmon Anderson is his assistant and a computer savant, Shearson, Del, and Jack Dionosopoulos is to be the first one in. Lieutenant Lily Rothenburg is NYPD, sent out by the Andretti family to ensure justice; her husband, David, is a sociology professor at NYU and a bicyclist. Larry Hart is Sioux and with the Minneapolis Welfare office. Gary Kieffer is the very righteous idiot of an FBI man. Larry Clay is the youngest son of a wealthy man, and the scum of the earth. He uses and abuses his power as a cop, then lawyer, state senate, police chief, then assistant U.S. attorney general, and finally FBI director. He and fellow street cop Carl Reed set the scene with their rape of a young Indian girl. Ray Cuervo is a slumlord with a wife, Harriet, with a mouth like barbed wire. Bald Peterson is Harriet’s “associate”. John Lee Benton is a parole officer eager to send Indians back to prison. John Andretti heads up the welfare office in New York City. Judge Merrill Ball had taken a bribe in a case on illegal waste disposal. Elmer Linstad is an attorney general.Native Americans include:Aaron Sunders and Samuel Close are cousins, Mdewakanton Sioux born the same day. To their own people they are the Crows, named for their mothers’ father and they have been inseparable for the past 60 years after a harrowing winter they spent with their families. Shadow Love is related to them; he’s a killer, a weapon, a psychopath. Rose E. Love was his mother and the Crows his fathers. Barbara Gow is a lover the Crows had been with in the past and are with now. She’s also Shadow’s godmother.Leo Clark is an old customer. Betty Sails is a receptionist shared by the people in Benton’s office. Tony Bluebird, a sun-dancer, was seen by three people. Lila Bluebird is his wife. Dick Yellow Hand is a teen addicted to crack. Billy Hood is quite enterprising; Roger was his brother-in-law. Leo Clark. Dick. John Liss is in surgery. His wife, Louise, caves when Lucas sets their son up.Some of Lucas’ network includes:William Dooley is a barber. Betty and Earl May run Dakota Hardware. Elwood Stone is a drug dealer.Louis Wink is the StarTribune’s editor, Harold Probst the publisher, and Kelly Lawrence is the city editor. Shelly Breedlove is a reporter for Channel 8.Corky Drake is a pimp who specializes in a particular age range of girls. The CoverThe cover has a black background with a fuchsia feathery slash in it revealing a terrified woman---eyes wide and mouth open in terror --- with the title and author’s name in silver.The title is more about what brings the Crows down: Shadow Prey.
Two aging radical Sioux named Sam and Aaron Crow have planned a murderous terror campaign in which they’ve sent their followers to several locations across the country to kill various government officials and other people they consider enemies of Native Americans. When throats start getting cut from Minnesota to New York, Lucas Davenport and the other Minneapolis cops find themselves in the middle of a national crisis.While John Sandford greatly expanded the scale from the first book to the second, he doesn’t skimp on adding new dimensions to his main character. Lucas is often frustrated in this one because he doesn’t have good contacts in the Native American community of Minneapolis. Feeling useless pushes him in reckless directions and prompts him to try a fairly ugly and shady scheme to work people for information.In addition to the work, Lucas is dealing with being a new father with his semi-regular girlfriend but he’s also a chronic womanizer so a visiting NYPD detective named Lily Rothenberg catches his eye and the feeling is mutual. Fortunately, Sandford spices up the trope of having the hero hook up with someone in an action story by putting some weight and consequences to the relationship between Lily and Lucas. Davenport cares about his girlfriend but that doesn’t stop him from seeing other women. Lily is in a supposedly happy marriage, but can’t help feeling attracted to Lucas. Their relationship highlights their flaws and makes this whole romantic sub-plot a lot easier to take than the usual cliche of the main characters in a thriller falling for each other instantly and tumbling into bed.Sandford displays another aspect he’d continue to give us throughout the series: memorable villains. The Crows actually seem like good and honorable guys in their own way, and the plan they’ve come up with is fiendishly clever with a definite goal in mind. There’s another level of evil added with the man they consider their son, Shadow Love. Shadow is such a psycho that the Crows are hesitant to use him in a rampage that’s designed to kill multiple people. When people think that a guy is too crazy to be used in a killing spree, that’s when you know he’s nuts.Sandford also showed off his knack for creating tense scenarios that imagine large scale manhunts amidst media freakouts. This was written in 1990, but Sandford foreshadowed some elements that would become all too familiar. When one character refers to the killings as the first large scale and organized acts of terror on American soil, it’s chilling. Even creepier is when one of the murders takes place in the Oklahoma City federal building which would become infamous just a few years later.It’s another action-packed and smart thriller which showed that Davenport would be doing more than just chasing serial killers in every book.Next: Lucas beats up a pimp and tracks a couple of serial killers in Eyes of Prey.
What do You think about Shadow Prey (2006)?
Shadow Prey (Lucas Davenport Book 2) Summary: A slumlord and a welfare supervisor butchered in Minneapolis... a rising political star execute in Manhattan... an influential judge taken in Oklahoma City... All the homicides have the same grisly method - the victims throat is slashed with an Indian ceremonial knife - and in every case the twisted trail leads back through the Minnesota Native American community to an embodiment of primal evil known as Shadow Love. Once unleashed, Shadow Love's need
—Ashley
It's a good thing that I didn't begin this series with this book or I would never have read another one. I enjoyed the later books but hated this version of Davenport. What a self-centered, heartless, arrogant a**hole. He actually punches an old woman in the back. Twice. He bullies his contacts on the streets and his contempt for nearly everyone is palpable. He doesn't seem disgusted by the fact that an 8-year old girl is being pimped and raped. Doesn't mention it. He seems unconcerned that his
—Amy
SHADOW PREY by John Sandford.....You don’t often see Native Americans portrayed as a domestic terrorist group in a novel. But that’s what John Sandford did in this second book of the Lucas Davenport series. The “Prey” novels are all thrillers in that we know exactly who did the ghastly murder, or more often murders, that Davenport and his team of investigators are trying to solve. In this case, the Crowe brothers, Aaron and Sam, Sioux Indians, have recruited a few other Native Americans to assassinate prominent or significant people who have been insensitive toward or detrimental to the Indians of the Minnesota / South Dakota area. The story takes place in 1990, but the Crowes have been activists since the 1950s and 60s, and this is their first foray into the extreme violence business. In the prologue, we see that the weapon of choice is a symbolic obsidian knife used to cut the victim’s throats. In the second chapter it becomes no secret that their ultimate victim, one who will make the strongest political statement, is the current director of the FBI, a prejudiced man who seems to have his sights set on the presidency. All the Indians are resolved to die for their cause, except one wild card who maneuvers on the periphery of the main group of killers, Shadow Love, for whom the book is titled. The Crowes and their followers are idealists. Shadow is a mentally disturbed, semi-homeless young man related to one of the Crowes; he’s not exactly sure which one is his father because they both often slept with his mother. The Crowes insist that the unstable Shadow not be part of their operation, but that doesn’t stop him from participating on his own, picking victims not within the grand scheme of the terrorist plot and a few Native Americans who he sees as traitors to The People. This is an aggressively written novel. The cops are the most aggressive. The terrorists are often written as unwilling participants in what they perceive as a necessary albeit savage endeavor to make a statement the world can see and feel. I wondered if former journalist Sandford (a/k/a John Camp) dislikes the police. He portrays them as crude in their language and habits, whether they’re male or female. Most of the secondary but regular players don’t get much character development and the familiar names are accompanied by little more than a few sketchy descriptions and background information. Lucas Davenport seems to be more of an anti-hero than traditional protagonist. He’s an unwed father, a philanderer, a more than occasional killer, and an independently wealthy part-time computer game designer.At face value, this isn’t a series that I would normally get involved with, but Sandford tells a good story. His plots are extreme, but plausible, and the action is easy to follow and visualize. I don’t like Lucas or identify with him. He’s no Jesse Stone or Harry Bosch or Amos Walker or other hero type. He’s not even a guy who I’d like to work with, but John Sandford keeps dragging me back for another story whenever I want to sample the Minneapolis / St. Paul atmosphere.
—Wayne Zurl
