"Thrilling police procedural"

In Duluth, Trey witnesses Carl Walther kill a Russian sailor Rodion Oleshev. Carl notices the street person who observed his committing homicide, but she escapes. Later he sees her wearing that same telltale Czechoslovakian Army coat and kills her with a garrote. The dead sailor's father, a business mogul who controls oil machinery, insists justice occurs and uses his influence with various Russian power factions to ensure that the killer receives his just award.

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Chief Lucas Davenport deals with difficult cases and the understanding that his boss the Governor must not look bad. He is assigned to work the Duluth homicide that has brought in the FBI "helping" the locals. Russian police officer Nadia Kalin is assigned as an observer. The group investigates the crime that takes them to an inactive communist cell that at one time assisted getting Russians in and out of the country back in the 1960s and 1970s. Someone in that cell will kill to keep secrets buried as more murders follow to insure that the group's identities remain protected.

John Sandford's latest police procedural connects homicides with a spy ring through a killer who is a victim too. The fast paced action enthralls the audience as the characters seem real especially when the audience catches glimpses into Lucas' personal life that includes keeping his cherished wife informed. He is a hero who loves his wife and infant son and has earned more than enough money to retire, but feels he owes society for his opportunities and remits his debts with his dedicated police work.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted April 25, 2004

Summary

With Naked Prey, John Sandford proved again that his writing is as fresh and compulsively readable as ever. "This is vintage Sandford, which is to say all but impossible to put down," said The Washington Post. "Sprawling, suspenseful, tough-minded [and] sheer fun." Six months ago, Lucas Davenport tackled his first case as a statewide troubleshooter, and he thought that one was plenty strange enough. But that was before the Russian got killed. On the shore of Lake Superior, a man named Vladimir Orslov is found shot dead, three holes in his head and heart, and though nobody knows why, everybody-the local cops, the FBI, and the Russians themselves-has a theory. And when it turns out he had very high government connections, that's when it hits the fan. A Russian cop flies in from Moscow, Davenport flies in from Minneapolis, law enforcement and press types swarm the crime scene-and, in the middle of it all, there is another murder. Is there a relationship between the two? What is the Russian cop hiding from Davenport? Is she-yes, it's a woman-a cop at all? Why was the man shot with . . . fifty- year-old bullets? Before he can find the answers, Davenport will have to follow a trail back to another place, another time, and battle the shadows he discovers there-shadows that turn out to be both very real and very deadly.