I have read all of the "Prey" books. This book does not, exactly, meet up to the standards of previous books. Lucas Davenport is not the "loose cannon" that he was in the past. The search for the villain is not as compelling. I felt that another character in the book should have, either been the murderer, or, at least, an accomplice. This mystery woman could have been the missing element. John Sandford is one of my favorite authors. He seems determined to rehabilitate Lucas Davenport. (He tried in Winter Prey, and now, again in Secret Prey.) Maybe, he needs to read Mickey Spillane and make Lucas more like Mike Hammer, like he was in Eyes of Prey and Silent Prey, the best books of this series, by far.

Sandford is the pseudonym for John Camp, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. I happened to run across this book while staying with a friend at Little St. Simon's Island over Thanksgiving. It was one of those bibliophile moments when you are bored and perusing a bookcase of paperbacks. Suddenly I was enthralled. I like his characters so much that I have read four of his novels and am in the middle of two more in less than a month. I find I cannot put them down!

I actually cannot tell you precisely why I like these books so much, which may be the greatest testimonial I can give them as simply good reads. Most of them are set in the Minneapolis area and the central characters are a homicide team that gets the toughest cases. The central figure in the series is Lucas Davenport, a detective, then ultimately a vice-chief who made a good bit of money designing software games but is addicted to the dangers and complexities of solving difficult crimes and taking on violent criminals.

This particular novel involves the killing of a bank president in the middle of a merger. It has enough twists and turns to keep you turning the pages all night. The characters are believable and the plot is both engrossing and becomes very convincing as you get deeper into the characters' personalities, histories and motivation.

Sandford/Camp is to Minneapolis what Parker is to Boston and Archer was to Southern California. I highly recommend his works.

In the ninth installment of the Prey series, Lucas Davenport has to sort out a hornet's nest of suspects with motive to determine who killed the board chairman of a local bank.

Sandford does a great job of setting up the reader for the surprise villain. This is a little different than other 'Prey' books, because the bad guys are usually more apparent.

Also in this new 'Prey' book, Lucas' personal life takes a hit in the form of an awkward estrangement from his fiancé. Because I have enjoyed watching Lucas Davenport mature from a womanizing hound to an in-love romantic, this development was hard to take, but I am sure Sandford knows best. He has so far, anyway.

If you have read other books in the 'Prey' series, keep reading. If not, well what are you waiting for? Read them now.

Don't read this book!

If you're reading this, I assume you haven't read the series up to Night Prey. If you had, you wouldn't waste your time reading reviews. There would be no question. There would be no hesitation. You'd be reading Night Prey.

So since you haven't read the series to this point, start at Rules of Prey. Follow with Shadow Prey, Eyes of Prey, Silent Prey, and Winter Prey. Then it's time for this.

Night Prey is a solid addition to the series to this point. While it doesn't quite stand up to the level of excellence established in the preceding three volumes, it's still a compelling story with memorable characters. And while the main story is one of pure suspense, with any real element of mystery sacrificed to study the villain, Sandford weaves in a subplot which is classic "locked door" (as another reviewer puts it). It's nicely done.

A question for those who've read the book : If SSA is backwards, is SJ as well? What's the author's name?

The classic game of cat and mouse is an evergreen of the mystery genre, and few practice it better than John Sandford and his creation, Minneapolis police detective Lucas Davenport. This is ably demonstrated in the sixth book in the Prey series, "Night Prey."

Davenport, hired back by the new police chief to investigate their toughest cases, is pursuing one of the most violent killers he's ever encountered. The unknown perpetrator commits acts of extreme brutality against women, murdering with incredible force and viciousness.

As always, Sandford keeps the plot interesting and the action swift, leading us through the investigation along with Davenport as he unravels the Gordian knot of clues and evidence. At the same time, the author gives us the killer's viewpoint, showing us a glimpse of his twisted mind. Sandford excels at this type of parallel storytelling, upping the urgency of Lucas catching the nutcase before he kills again.

If you haven't yet had the joy of reading this excellent series, I recommend you start with the first book ("Rules of Prey") and enjoy some of the best writing in the genre.

This was the third book from the Davenport series that I have read and easily the best. I liked the feeling of impending doom with the main characters racing against time to catch the killer before he can strike again and before one of the investigators dies of cancer. The eventual solution of this pending collision caught me by surprise. And, in case this wasn't enough, Sandford threw in a locked room murder mystery as a clever subplot. If anyone in Hollywood ever wants to bring a Lucas Davenport thriller to the screen, this would be a good one to start with.

Winter Prey is suspenseful and tense. The setting is rural Wisconsin at 20° below. The hero is the likable Lucas Davenport, who gets pulled into solving the murders of the LaCourt family by the small-time county sheriff, an inexperienced, near retirement, sometimes pathetic, but mostly sympathetic character. While the dialog was sometimes less than impressive, the story was action-packed. A real plus--there was never a moment before revealing the murderer that I even thought I knew who it was. The Iceman is a real surprise, not only because of the twists in the story, but also because you're not given enough information to suspect him. I plan to read more John Sandford after this, mostly for the character Lucas Davenport. I only hope they don't have such corny, awkwardly written love affairs as the one in this book with medical examiner Weather Karkinnen.

Lucas Davenport ain't never going to be Harry Bosch, but he's a good enough morally ambivalent character that you care about what he does and why he does it. Of the Prey series, this is a standout for its plot about ugly sexual behavior in the sticks and for its detailed evocation of Minnesota in the dead (no pun intended) of winter. Mystery aficionados already know this book, and they'll tell you that another great thing about it is that Sandford plays fair with the plot. Things get strange, but there's a logical thread throughout. Superior reading for long-distance air travel.

Lucas Davenport is back and better than ever. With Winter Prey, Sandford relocates Davenport yet again, this time to the frozen countryside of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Sandford's last Prey novel, Silent Prey, tried something similar, moving Davenport to NYC but it was, unfortunately, not at all successful. Luckily Winter Prey proves to be a much better installment in the series.

Much of the action and plot of the book follows Sandford's "prey format" and Sandford doesn't disappoint in Winter Prey. Quite a bit of the appeal in these stories is derived from the evolving back-story and the development of Davenport. And while Winter Prey largely ignored recurring characters seen in previous novels, Sandford's characters were likable and I can only hope that some of them return.

Overall, if you felt burned by Silent Prey, you'll feel much better after Winter Prey. A real page-turner.

This is John Sandford's tenth book starring Minneapolis police detective Lucas Davenport. The "Prey" novels, much like James Patterson's Alex Cross books, have several ongoing plotlines that add continuity value to the stories. Like all Sandford's books, Certain Prey is packed full of colorful villians, great cop talk, and lots of interesting investigation procedures that Davenport is careful to follow lest his quarry get off due to a technicality. Clara Rinker is Davenport's sport for this book, but she's a careful professional killer with a nack for covering her escapes. When Lucas gets close she takes it personally and suddenly the detective finds himself in the unfamiliar role of being the quarry in a deadly game of cat & mouse. With an ending even long time readers won't guess, Certain Prey is "certainly" one of John Sandford's best.(If you're a "continuity junkie" like me, start with the first book Rules of Prey and read them all in copyright order. They get progressively better as you go.)

Hmmm. What a mix made in [location]! The unholy duo of Carmen and Clara! This is a big chewy book with enough chills to keep you up late into the night trying to finish it.

A Minnesota socialite is murdered in a parking garage, by what seems to be a professional killer. But why? As the story unfolds, and more corpses turn up, we follow these two women on their twisted mission.

I found myself feeling some empathy for Clara Rinker, while Carmen left me cold. It's a testament to Sanfords writing, that he can arouse such strong feelings about his characters. The chief protagonist: Lucas Davenport himself, is a conflicted man. Feared by many, but respected by most of his colleagues, he is a natural born cop with a taste for killing.

As he tracks Carmen and Clara through the many twists and turns of the case, we can sense the developing affinity he has with Clara Rinker.

Both females are very deftly drawn and their characters are well developed. This was a thoroughly enjoyable book, and I'm looking forard to Lucas's next encounter with the emotionally compelling Clara.

The Prey series has just built a life of it's own. Unlike some of the tired and tried crime series out there, author John Sandford (Camp) has made each entry in his series quite unique. Some of the books have given us a serial killer (Rules of Prey, Eyes of Prey), others handle action (Sudden Prey, Shadow Prey), others allow a cat-and-mouse storyline (Mind Prey, Silent Prey), and still others move right into a straight mystery (Winter Prey, Secret Prey). Sandford keeps things fresh while constantly making each novel stand on it's own strengths.

The constant of the series is of course central character Lucas Davenport. Millionaire cop? Sure. But once you get past this, show me one man out there who wouldn't want to be Lucas. Smart. Sexy. Rich. Adventurous. I know I'd like to be him.

All this of course leads to this entry in the Prey series - CERTAIN PREY. Much like Eyes of Prey, this story gives Lucas two antagonists to deal with. One is a smart, rich, borderline psychopath. The other is a strong, skilled, borderline sociopath. Killings happen. Clues are left. And the characters match wits...and keep the reader turning the pages.

I recommend this book. It is definately one of the stronger entries in the series.

I discovered Sanford and Davenport in Mind Prey and have since gone back and read all of the books in the series preceeding it and plan to read the ones following it. I enjoy Davenport because he is a good "cop" but he has his indiscretions without it tainting too much of his character. I really don't like that he has to sleep with a different woman in each book, though he is very honest about his enjoyment of women and his inability to resist most of them. This book, though not as good as some of his others, took an interesting turn by taking Davenport out of his usual haunts and placed him in New York City with a lot of people he did not know. Using the ultimate narcisistic psycho, Bekker, as the antagonist again was great! Sanford has a scarey imagination. I enjoyed the main plot twist that was keeping the police from spotting Bekker. I also enjoyed the parrellel story about Robin Hood. It was interesting trying to follow two plots that eventually merged in to one plot. Sanford writes some seriously good stuff. I look forward to reading the rest of this series as well as his other books. This is a good read!

Way to go Davenport AND your love interest survived this time! Maybe the Davenport curse regarding relationships with women has been lifted? Like "Eyes of Prey" finished this one in two evenings also. Overheard a woman in our local bookstore tell the clerk that her mother had read all of Sandford's book and I can see why she read the whole series. Sandford is like popcorn, once you start his books are hard to put down.

The best to date in John Sandford's "Prey" series! Lucas Davenport's original nemesis, Dr. Michael Bekker, is back after escaping from custody and is back to his old tricks! Sandford's ability to keep his books in your hands (I took it to work with me one day!) never falters. I was actually disappointed when the book ended; I wanted to read more! I'm a big fan of the "Prey" series anyway, but I'd recommend this one to any mystery fan. A word of warning: if you buy this one, you may as well buy the rest of the series. You'll be back at the bookstore within the week!

While Younker's gift for story telling is not quite up to the level of a James Herriot, who is? All that aside it is one of the most entertaining comtemporary books written by an American veterinarian. It is definitely on a par with David Taylor's "Zoo Vet".

Lucas Younker's love for animals and compassion show throughout the book. While nonconventional for that time, he would hardly draw a second glance today. One of my first thoughts after reading this book was "I wonder if he is still in practice" and "I wish he could care for my pets".

All in all, it is a somewhat salty and probably much more realistic portrayal of a vet's life, but yet still manages to touch you and make you feel his passion for animals.

Burmese Design and Architecture by Johni. Falconer, et al, offers a perfect balance between excellent photography and enlighting commentary, which together bring alive the splendor of Burmese, Mon, Arakan and other architectural styles.

Certainly a recommended book for the Southeast-Asia enthusiast!

Like all devoted lovers of Jane Austen, I have long pondered why she chose to write this, of all books, at time she was experiencing the intoxicating success of Pride and Prejudice.

The protagonist is a loathesome little priss. Austen herself says so in her letters. Fanny Price is neurotic and oversensitive where Austen's other heroines are brash and healthy. Even Austen's own family found the ending as odd and disappointing as do subsequent generations of readers.

So there's a puzzle to be solved here. The answer may lie in the fact that this book was written when, after a lifetime of obscurity, Austen found herself, briefly, a huge success. As is so often the case with writers, the success of her earlier book may have given her the courage to decided write about something that REALLY mattered to her--and what that was was her own very complex feelings about the intensely sexual appeal of a morally unworthy person.

This topic, the charm of the scoundrel, is one that flirts through all her other books, usually in a side plot. However, the constraints of Austen's day made it impossible for her to write the story of a woman who falls for a scoundrel with a sympathetic viewpoint character.

So what I think Austen may have decided to do was to write this story using Edmund--a male--as the sympathetic character who experiences the devastating sexual love of someone unworthy. Then, through a strange slight of hand, she gives us a decoy protagonist--Fanny Price, who if she is anything, is really the judgemental, punishing Joy Defeating inner voice--the inner voice that probably kept Jane from indulging her own very obvious interest in scoundrels in real life!

In defense of this theory, consider these points:

1. Jane herself loved family theatricals. Fanny's horror of them and of the flirting that took place is the sort of thing she made fun of in others. Jane also loved her cousin, Eliza, a married woman of the scoundrelly type, who flirted outrageously with Jane's brother Henry when Jane was young--very much like Mary Crawford. The fact is, and this bleeds through the book continuously, Austen doesn't at all like Fanny Price!

To make it more complex, Fanny's relationship with Henry Crawford is an echo of the Edmund-Mary theme, but Austen makes Henry so appealing that few readers have forgiven Austen for not letting Fanny liven up a little and marry him! No. Austen is trying to make a case for resisting temptation, but in this book she most egregiously fails.

2. Austen is famous for never showing us a scene or dialogue which she hadn't personally observed in real life, hence the off-stage proposals in her other books.

Does this not make it all the more curious that the final scene between Edmund and Mary Crawford in which he suffers his final disillusionment and realizes the depths of her moral decay comes to us with some very convincing dialogue? Is it possible that Jane lived out just such a scene herself? That she too was forced by her inner knowlege of what was right to turn away from a sexually appealing scoundrel of her own?

3. Fanny gets Edmund in the end, but it is a joyless ending for most readers because it is so clear that he is in love with Mary. Can it be that Austen here was suggesting the grim fate that awaits those who do turn away from temptations--a lifetime of listening to that dull, upstanding, morally correct but oh so joyless voice of reason?

We'll never know. Cassandra Austen burnt several years' worth of her sister's letters--letters written in the years before she prematurely donned her spinster's cap and gave up all thoughts of finding love herself. Her secrets whatever they were, were kept within the family.

But one has to wonder about what was really going on inside the curious teenaged girl who loved Samual Richardson's rape saga and wrote the sexually explicit oddity that comes to us as Lady Susan. Perhaps in Mansfield Park we get a dim echo of the trauma that turned the joyous outrageous rebel who penned Pride and Prejudice in her late teens into the staid, sad woman when she was dying wrote Persuasion--a novel about a recaptured young love.

So with that in mind, why not go and have another look at Mansfield Park!

this book was interesting enough. i love jane austen. my two personal faves were pride and prejudice and emma. this was interesting, the plot was intriguing and everything. i just thought that way too much was going on throughout the book. it was event after event after event. it was definitely suspenseful. the end was satisfying enough. fanny is not the best of jane austen's heroines. my favorite character was sir thomas. he was cool. i enjoy reading books of this sort generally. fanny could have been more interesting. i don't get why she was so totally in love with edmund the whole time that he was in love with mary crawford. it is a good read if you have time. it took me a month or so to read it because i had to read in the few spare moments i have aside from school reading and other work. i do recommend it to people who enjoy jane austen and those who are willing to take a good chunk of time out of their day to read.

As Jane Austen's most controversial novel, Mansfield Park continues to occupy an inveterate place in literature for its dark charm, its slow yet steady rhythm, its dry yet sharp and ironic humor, and of course fabulous charaterization built on extensive description all within a country challenged by progress.

Readers become acquainted with Fanny Price, a victorian era Cinderella so it appeared--plucked from her family in destitude to be allowed to blossom at her wealthy uncle's house, Mansfield Park. Of course being passive, steadfast, timid...certainlly lacking the very fierce which makes Emma and Marrianne among other Austen heroine memorable. Yet withstanding the seductive charm of fortune and of consequence, Fanny Price resists the wooing of a stranger Mr. CRawford who puzzles everyone with his light gallantry and dark desires. A soulmate since childhood, Fanny's cousin Edmund yields in to Miss Crawford, who is all but a nonessential part of Mr. Crawford's scheme of stolen pleasure. Henry Crawford, certainlly one of the darknest characters ever portrayed, more so then Willoughbe (excuse the sp.) is too caught up in the sensual delights of his incessant conquests (including Fanny's 2 pretty cousins) that even though he ackowledges the good influence Fanny's purity has on his heart, he is too deeply sunken in his web of "play" to rise and face truth of love. Yes, Henry Crawford did love Fanny with his heart, at least the pure part of it, unlike Edmund who loves Fanny only out of brotherly affection. But Fanny, whose steady character makes her an unlikely candidate to Crawford's actual reformation, refuses Crawford's sincerity and thus almost pushes him back into his bottomless hold of scheme. The storm thus takes place in the heart of London's upper society, casting its shadow on the peaceful Mansfield Park community and shattering everything Sir Thomas has persevered in building up--with fortune, and with consequence...a mention of slave trade as well.

Mary Crawford is a complex player, tainted by a society blindly wooing money and status, that even Edmund is not able to save the good side of her. Apart from Henry's scheme, Edmund is forced to refocus and, voila, there is Fanny (no matter how distasteful cousin-courtship is to many).

The movie adaptation of this tale certainlly emphasizes the fighting nature of Fanny which is rarely detected on pages. Yet what IS acknowledged and admired in the quiet little herione, is the perseverance so rare in a world on the verge of revolution.

This is John Sandford's twelfth "Prey" novel,and,although good, falls short of his past ones.All the familiar characters,Lucas Davenport,Marcy,Del,Rose Marie and a few others are there,plus the usual introduction of new individuals essential to the plot.Immediately we are introduced to James Qatar, a university professor,who is the serial killer that the story revolves around. His penchant for wooing and killing blonds leads Davenport and crew on a merry chase. Qatar focuses on Ellen Barstard throughout the book,but never seems quite credible as the serial killer who killed and buried all the women whose bodies were unearthed on a hillside. He appears too shallow to be the person we are led to believe he is.His character is without depth. After being introduced to Terry Marshall, a Wisconsin detective whose niece was killed, the chase broadens and we are led hither and yon on the search for this elusive killer who cleverly manages to escape detection because of his blandness until close to the end,in spite of several other unsimilar killings. The ending is predictable almost half-way thru this book.There is also the possibility of Lucus and Rose Marie being replaced in the near future, so who knows where the next"Prey" book will take us.We also could have done without Weather's trying to get pregnant. Lucus as a father does not lend itself to his expected role as the cool detective with a Porsche and witty repartee.Let's hope he remains the same.

By now, John Sandford (the pen name of John Camp) has these things down pat. His main character, Lucas Davenport, is a three-dimensional policeman, hunting serial killers and dangerous murderers, seducing women, and cracking wise now and again. The secondary characters---other cops, the killer, his girlfriend, victims---are marvelously rendered, and you're actually sad when one meets his/her end.

This time around, the bad guy is an art professor named James Qatar, who kills beautiful women, and has been doing it successfully for years. He's an interesting and very well-drawn character, what with his obsession with clothing, and his meticulousness about the killings that he does. Davenport is looking at a particular murder, and it's discovered that a woman, missing for several years, resembles the killing in a few details. Then clues begin to build up, and the suspense builds as the plot thickens, so to speak.

I would recommend this book, though of course it's not the best (I still think Rules of Prey was in a class by itself; it should be read first) and if you haven't read other books in the series you're going to be a bit at sea about the relationships between the various characters. Still, a good book.

This was a hard book for me to rate. I have read the previous books in Sandford's Prey series, eleven in all. As a reader who is familiar with all long running characters and plot threads, reading this book was like running into an old friend you have not seen in years, and talking like you live next door to each other. It was a pleasure to read simply for the continued evolution of the characters I have grown to know and love.

On the other hand, as a passable, stand alone novel, Sandford falls so far short of his past triumphs that I wonder if this does not signal the end for Lucas Davenport and company. Gone is all the tension, suspense, and thrill-of-the-chase that was so prevalent in many of the early Prey books. It has been replaced with a tired reworking of past Prey villains and a soap opera pace. In fact, the hunt for the bad guy plays a secondary role to Lucas' relationship with his ex-fiancée. It is writing like this that leads me to believe that Sandford is trying to stage a stopping point in this series.

If you have not read the previous Prey books, perhaps your money or time would be better spent reading a different book. If you are a Prey veteran, then carry on.