Mortal Prey

Rating:
Summary: Read for a 9th grade project
Review: John Sandford's tough, smart cop, Lucas Davenport, is up against Clara Rinker, the best hit-woman in the business. It's a rematch.

Sandford deserves monuments: his writing is smooth, his characters rich, his plots greased with flawless efficiency.

You can pick any of Sandford's fifteen or so "Prey" thrillers and be swept into a world of good people and bad; of justice and injustice.

Lucas Davenport feels real. He hurts. He makes mistakes. He gets tired, cold and hungry. He is definitely not invulvernable. But he is smart and dogged.

He's a fictional treat because he feels so real. And John Sandford is to be profusely thanked for not only his creation but for his growth from one "Prey" novel to the next.

Jerry

Rating:
Summary: The 'man-hunt' for Clara Rinker
Review: Clara Rinker was the female assassin Lucas Davenport met in an earlier book, Certain Prey. She managed to escape both him and the FBI, and have been hiding in Mexico. Something terrible happens down there, and Clara is forced to go back to the States to seek revenge. While Clara gets aquainted with old friends and foes, Davenport and the FBI figures out, that because of the incidents in Mexico, they should begin looking for Clara in the States again. Soon dead bodies start to turn up, and there is no doubt in Davenport's mind that it is Clara's work. But neither he nor the FBI can find her. Lucas is helping out the feds, but it is not before he starts investigating on his own, with the help from a couple of retired cops, that he starts to find the rigth track. Question is, will Clara succeed in escaping this time as well?

Rating:
Summary: Clara should have survived.
Review: Clara was one of the deepest characters Sandford ever created with more to her than most of the rather simple characters including Lucas. I might be the only one but all the way through the book I rooted for her to succeed and escape. Given her history of carefully planned executions - some in this book are classic examples - why she fell for the all too simple trap Lucas set is a mystery aside from the need to end the book.

No, she killed off a number of people in this book who needed to be removed. She was a professional and she looked at Lucas that way - not the type to take the risk to kill him high profile. She would have waited years if need be to get just the right situation. She had removed the threat to her from the mob. she would have laid low. Far better to have brought her back a few books from now unexpectedly - perhaps to kill lucas at the end of the series. This was the only disappointing part. 4 of 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Mortal Prey -- DOA
Review: Man, it sucks when you have a best seller that uses the same paragraphs, almost word for word in two different chapters. It took me 20 minutes to figure out I was on the right page. I had to go back to page 163 to a phone call between Rinker and Lucas to figure out that it was not a tape recording or a flash of Deje Vu on my part, when they have the same conversation on page 174. This also screws up the hole story line, because Rinker already used the information in the first call to inform the press. And now it seems like the two never made contact at all. Lucas even gives her his cell number twice. I almost chucked the book in the can. Unfortunantly I usually share my books with others, but this one will go out with the monday trash. I was hoping for a good read, not a test of my reading comprehension.

Don't frustrate yourself with this book.
Consider it DOA.

Rating:
Summary: More thrills from Sandford
Review: Mortal Prey features the return of two of Sandford's best characters: Lucas Davenport, one of the great detective personalities in modern mystery writing, and Clara Rinker, an assassin for the mob who is written with more complexity and intensity than ever before.

This novel is as complex as any Sandford has written. It begins with the murder of Rinker's boyfriend in Mexico. Being a member of the Mexican mafia, the man's family believes his death was simply a hit, but Rinker knows better - it was a botched attack on her. She travels back home to the United States both out of a desire for revenge and to protect her own life. Rinker knows not only that they will come after her again, but that if her boyfriend's Mexican mafia family realizes their son was killed during a hit on her, they'll come after her in retaliation.
Her return to the United States does not go unnoticed by the FBI. Davenport is called in to track her down, leading to a wonderful escape-suspense-pursuit story that keeps you turning the pages.

I like Sandford's writing and I read everything he writes featuring Davenport. For the uninitiated, Mortal Prey is a great place to begin reading in the `Prey' series. And of course, fans of the earlier books will enjoy this one.


Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: Mortal Prey is another great book by John Sandford. I am 2/3 of the way through the book but I read the review by
L. Huff "Educated reader" who complains of the same conversation being in the story twice. This reviewer foolishly believes Sandford carelessly repeated himself. Not true. This is the conversation from both Rinker's and Davenport's point of view and it isn't confusing at all. I just thought I'd clarify that for those considering this novel.

Rating:
Summary: An Edge of Your Seat Thriller!
Review: This is the first John Sandford novel that I've ever read, and I really enjoyed it. It probably would have been better to have read some of the earlier books in the series in order to understand the history of Clara Rinker and Lucas Davenport, but the author does a pretty good job of bringing the reader up to date with this book. I found that the book had me cheering for the bad girl, as well as the good guys, and I was absolutely glued to the tape machine to hear what happened next. The story is about a female hit lady (the best in the business), and her personal vendetta to right wrongs done to her and to the man that she loved. She has a list of four names that she wants to wreak her vengeance on, and we see how brilliant she is in accomplishing this. Even more notable when the four names are names very high up in organized crime in St. Louis. I now need to read more Lucas Davenport books!

Rating:
Summary: A uniquie "bad guy" in the Prey series
Review: While trying to read these books in order, I picked up Mortal Prey because I needed an audio book for a long trip. I didn't want to because I knew the bad guy in this book, bad girl assassin "Clara Rinker" was also in a previous novel.

The novel opens in the traditional Prey method of desribing the nemisis first. Rinker is in a hospital bed after a failed attempt on her life that took the life of her fiance and unborn child. We quickly discover who tried to kill Rinker and follow her trip back to the USA where she vows vegance on the Mafia guys who tried to kill her.

Not knowing about Rinker from the earlier novel, I immediately have sympathy for her. Sandford follows her efforts with precise detail and covers her background of abuse and neglect just enough for me to be happy when she succeeds in her revenge plots.

Lucas Davenport joins the FBI and together they are always one step ahead of Rinker. It is frustrating in cases like this that the cops must fail to keep the story moving, but Stanford does a good job of keeping the investigation moving.

Clara Rinker is a sympathetic person until she starts taking out cops, FBI agents and innocent bystanders. Finally, she is the bad guy that we want to see die. Davenport, after many failures, is a worthy adversary of Rinker and the novel comes to a satisfying conclusion.

I'm interested in reading the previous Rinker novel to see what kind of character she is. As usual, Standford has written another good novel.