Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not the best in the series
Review: In the thirteenth Prey book featuring Lucas Davenport, John Sandford continues to deliver one of the most consistently good series in suspense fiction. While not the best in the bunch, it is still good enough to satisfy any Sandford fan.A follow-up novel to Certain Prey - a couple books back in the series - Mortal Prey has the return of top-notch assassin Clara Rinker. She escaped at the end of Certain Prey, but when her lover is killed and she sustains a wound that kills her unborn baby, Clara is drawn out of hiding to avenge the murders. Lucas, hearing that Clara is back in the U.S., is called in to assist in her detention. Clara is a challenging contrast to the normal serial killers that Lucas contends with, principally because she is not truly insane and is not driven by some psychosis that forces her to kill. Instead, she is coldly calculating and not likely to make the errors in judgment that often do in other Davenport adversaries. There are no real flaws in this book except that Lucas himself is a little less interesting than usual. The Prey books are at their best when he is at his edgiest, and he is a bit tamer in this novel. Nonetheless, this is a good book and even a person new to the series should catch on pretty quickly and enjoy the ride.
Rating: 
Summary: Really Good
Review: What a perfect airplane book. I have read all the Prey books (started with Eyes of Prey, which was a mistake; it was so bloody I almost didn't read the others), and this is my favorite. It even has some big laughs, which I didn't expect. It looks as if Sandford (or Lucas) has lightened up a little. His sense of humor wasn't particularly showcased before. I recommend this one highly.
Rating: 
Summary: good read
Review: Another good read after several boring ones by Sandford, but brother what a BOGUS ending.
You have to love Clara Rinker, and Sandford betrays her in this one. Everything goes along swimmingly, then that ending. Ugh.
Fun, then a lingering disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Use a Cell Phone if You are an Evil Dooer Lucas Wants
Review: Lucas Davenport is the luckiest crime fighter in the World. He has survived 14 Prey novels by John Sanford (John Camp). (Naked Prey is is latest, reviewed elsewhere). Lucas gets invited to St. Louis for a few days by the FBI. Luckily, Minnesota doesn't need him. He is getting married, but Weather doesn't want him around Minneapolis, and neither do the politicians. Off he goes to search for the deadly Clara Rinker. You rember Clara? She is the best hit-woman in the business who tried to kill Lucas a couple of books ago. We wonder: Will Rinker go after Weather? Lucas' pregnant girlfriend? We hope not because she has been a target in four other books already and that plot line is getting old. Maybe Lucas will still have the luck to instantly make friends with police he doesn't know so they can give him the help he needs in a strange city. Maybe his luck will help him circumvent the reluctant, bureaucratic FBI guys and gals so he can work without restrictions in total freedom, even if lots of people are dying. He must quickly track Rinker down in a city she knows well and Lucas doesn't. She has friends to help her, and places to hide. Lucas has to make some friends and get his luck going for him, or Rinker is going to keep on keeping on killing people as she seeks revenge. Clara Rinker shot Lucas in the throat once before. She got away because she has some luck, too. Lucas got well. We admire Lucas. We like Rinker. She is a soft spoken, beautiful, brilliant killer with reasons why she is to be feared. Since we knew her last, Clara has fallen in love, and became pregnant by the son of a Mexican drug lord. She has retired and is a threat to nobody because she is living at home south of the border with the Mejias. Being a housewife isn't so bad. Things change. Somebody shoots her bad and ticks her off. Was the boyfriend the target? Or was she? She isn't going to forget this. The FBI drafts Lucas to come help find Clara because they hear she has come back into the country, mad as hell. Lucas can trapse around the country solving crimes while still on the Minneapolis payroll. Luckily, the hunt will only take a few days. The fact that his old FBI girlfriend Malone is going to be there won't bother the pregnant Weather because she has an Episcopalian wedding to plan and a house to finish. Lucas should be able to clean up this case in two or three days, but what if Rinker is as unpredictable as ever. Or as dangerous? Maybe she has more help than Lucas has? The one with the most luck or help wins. We hope nobody gets killed This is a fun plot, a page-turner if you don't think too much about whether it makes sense. Sandford offers his usual crisp, clear, adventure writing with good characterizations. Maybe we don't know who all the bad guys are, or how the story will end. Rinker knows how to disappear. Lucas knows how outsmart people and track them down. I liked the evil dooers better than the cops in this one. Too much unfair use of cell phone technology and police arrogance. Sandford is a skilled writer (a Pulitzer Prize winner in his other life) so even 14 books don't yet get too tiring or predictable. This is a fine summer read that will hit the top of the charts.
Rating:
Summary: Sandford is brilliant
Review: John has revisited his best character yet in the prey series. No matter what you try to do you can't help but to have loved Clara from the first moment you meet her. John has found a way to make the cutest little woman the worst ememy of all time. John created a love hate relationship with Clara. If you haven't read any of the series you are missing one great one.
Rating:
Summary: Good entertainment, no errors found!
Review: Yes, a telephone conversation is repeated from both sides, Clara and Davenport, and at first we could think it was an editor error. Reading with atention you'll see that was the aim of the author to show the two sides of the same conversation. I liked the book and did not find any absence of imagination, or lack of congruence on the story. So I give the maximum grade to the book.
Rating:
Summary: Return of Rinker
Review: Yes, when you know this story is centered around the return
of Clara Rinker, you have to read it. And the rewards are
great, because Rinker is a multi-dimentional, complex character,
and the most interesting villain in a long time.
She has appeared before in the "Prey" series and managed to
stay ahead of law enforcement at all times, and she has
settled in Mexico now, and she has a wonderful love interest,
and they are planning on marriage and a family. Then her
lover is gunned down in the town square, literally on top of
Clara, and no one locally can figure out who would want the
guy dead. But, then, no one there has any idea of the true
identify of Clara Rinker, and she is the only one who knows
that is was she, not the guy, who was the target. She is about
out of her mind with fury and grief, and she quickly decides
to go after whoever might have been responsible for her loss.
She is so dedicated to getting even, she doesn't even worry
about which of several possible enemies might have been responsible; she just decides to kill all of them!
So she returns to the American mid-west, and events then
propel the series hero, Lucas Davenport, a cop in Minneapolis,
to start looking for her again.
That their paths will cross is certain, and the outcome is
not quite forseeable. Each is the best of what they do, and
they are both determined to finish the job they started.
And that means more clashes and confrontations.
This is a first-class story, with a lot of interest, a fascinating plot, multi-dimentional characters, and this is a
difficult book to put down.
A lot of pleasure in this one.
Rating:
Summary: Let the bodies pile up
Review: Clara Rinker, hit woman extraordinaire, gets hit herself and her lover Paulo is killed. She looses her baby, but gains in fury to go after her employers in St. Louis whom she blames for trying to assassinate her. So she schemes to eliminate them, one after the other. Enter stage left: Lucas Davenport, Minneapolis `deputy Police Chief and now working for the FBI. Helping him are Mallard and Malone of the FBI and an old pal of his, Andreno, a retired cop. Let the killings begin. The first victim is Nanny Dichter, serving as a warning to the others - Paul Dallaglio, Andy Levy and John Ross. The killings are innovative and elegant. So much so, that Davenport increasingly admires Rinker. But the chase is on, and Rinker manages to escape every time by the fraction of a minute. The author not only has a vivid imagination, but knows how to put it on paper to keep you spellbound. Truly a great mystery. And I will not hold it against a lazy editor who brings a telephone conversation on page 147 and then repeats it verbatim, though under different circumstances, on page 158.
Rating:
Summary: Efficient, but no edge
Review: I've read the whole Prey series, which ranges from excellent to mediocre. Mortal Prey is definitely in the latter category, going through the motions competently enough but with no real spark, lacking the edge of Eyes of Prey, for example. The most entertaining thing about this book is the fact that author Carl Hiaason describes it on the cover as, 'a haunting, unforgettable, ice-blooded thriller', when in fact it's none of those things. John Sandford now owes him a really nice review for his next book, meanwhile the readers have all been suckered. I was bored when I read it and had to look through it again just now to see what it was about, after finishing it only days ago. Clara Rinker was never one of the more gripping or realistic baddies and barely carried the first book she appeared in, let alone a second one. Amidst all the descriptions of her whiskey-voiced blondeness, I never really got the feel of exactly why she became and did what she did. There are obligatory mentions of Lucas's life - longtime girlfriend and series character Weather is pregnant, yet he takes off and practically ignores her for the whole book. To make up for the incomplete emotional pictures we are repeatedly given detailed descriptions of the cut, color, style and brand of Davenport's clothes, his home renovations, the model numbers of his guns, and so on.
Hard-core Prey fans won't agree, and if you're a huge Lucas Davenport fan you'll no doubt still enjoy it. Just don't believe all the raves, and don't expect edge of your seat stuff like some of his earlier books.
Rating:
Summary: --Thrilling from Start to Finish--
Review: In Mortal Prey, author John Sandford gives us another exciting and fast-paced story. Detective Lucas Davenport is drafted by the FBI into helping them locate Clara Rinker, an attractive and intelligent young woman who also happens to be a very successful hired killer. Rinker had disappeared a few years back and had made an attempt to go straight, but when someone tries to kill her and succeeds in destroying her new life, Clara starts a killing spree of her own. Years before, Lucas Davenport had encountered Clara when she was working as a hit woman and she had outwitted him and escaped. Now Lucas has another chance to put Clara in prison; however, his feelings are somewhat mixed because in some ways he liked Clara and felt sorry for her because of the physical and sexual abuse that she had endured as a child. This author has a wonderful writing style and he keeps his characters fresh and interesting. The dialog and the jokes that the police detectives and FBI agents exchange are entertaining and ring true.
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