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Product Description: A wealthy woman and her maid are murdered. Robbery would seem the likely scenario, except that none of the clues are coming together for Lucas Davenport. At least not those he can see. Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-01
Creepy couple
A demented married couple is going around the upper midwest in order to murder old people for their antiques. This twist on what constitutes the "usual" serial killer in mystery novels, made this book stand out, for more reasons than just the excellent writing.
Davenport has quickly become one of my favorite American fictional police officers. Rating:
Date: 2008-06-19
Very very good
I've loved John Sandford's Prey series ever since the first book of the series, "Rules of Prey" just blew me away with its very unusual ending. Sandford has been, since then, one of the most reliable detective novelists in the genre, with a marvelous cast of supporting characters and a particularly nasty series of villains for Lucas Davenport--the main character--to hunt down. This latest book shows that Sandford hasn't lost his creative touch.
There's never any real confusion about who the killer is, here, though the author does make a feeble attempt to conceal their identities by referring to them as "Big" and "Little" in the opening sequence. The Widdlers are antiques dealers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, and a good portion of their success stems from the fact that they're frauds and criminals. As the book opens, they break into a house, murder the elderly occupants, and then steal some antiques. When the bodies are discovered, Lucas Davenport is brought in to investigate.
This is an especially good book from Sandford. Several of the supporting characters are very well-done, and interesting. Most amusing is a supporting cop named Virgil Flowers, who's constantly referred to in the book as "that f---ing flowers". There's also a brief cameo with Kidd, the main character from Sandford's other series.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, and the ending again was very satisfying. Highly recommended. Rating:
Date: 2008-06-03
1st time Sandford reader - I enjoyed it!
This is the 1st Sandford book I have read - I enjoyed it from cover to cover! Rating:
Date: 2008-05-27
Excellent as always
I've been reading Sandford's Prey books for the last few years. This one was as good as the others have been. Lucas Davenport delivers as always. Hopefully at some point we might get a movie, but until then at least there is no sign of an end to the series. Rating: 
Date: 2008-05-25
The couple that slays together, stays together
In a series that has gone on now for seventeen books, it is not surprising if some elements of the Prey novels are getting a little tired. While these are still okay books, they are not nearly as compelling as the early books were. To a large extent, this is due to the evolution of Lucas Davenport from edgy cop happy to womanize and break whatever rules are necessary, to a tamer family man who may bend the rules occasionally but is a little less interesting.
Invisible Prey is a perfect example, in which for a long time, Davenport has little interest in a set of murders outside of that required by his job. After all, at this point, he is independently wealthy (so he doesn't need the work) and his family life is happily stable, so there is little to upset his proverbial apple cart. Eventually, he will be more motivated, but the first part of the book just has him going through the motions.
The plot focuses on a husband-and-wife pair of burglar/killers who commit a seemingly perfect crime. It is, in fact, their attempts to cover up the crime that will threaten to undo them, not the crime itself. In killing a wealthy old lady and her maid for some antiques (they are antique dealers), they are hardly even on Davenport's radar, as he is more interested in an underaged sex scandal involving a state politician. The cover-up, however, draws Davenport in, as he starts to realize that there may be even more murders linked to this home invasion.
As is typically the case in a Prey novel, Sandford is less interested in plot twists (we know who the killers are early on) than in the procedure of hunting down the killers, and in the characters of the killers themselves. And as villains, the husband-and-wife are in the middle tier of Sandford villains, not great, not awful. I'm sure long-time fans of Sandford will be pleased with this book (and despite my griping, this book is good enough to merit a low four stars), but it is not the best introduction to his work. |
