Righteous Prey: A Lucas Davenport & Virgil Flowers thriller

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Fans of the Prey/Lucas Davenport series will already be familiar with Virgil Flowers as Davenport recruits him into the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. But before he joined the team, he was a US Army and military police officer, and he also had a stint as a cop in Saint Paul. A group of Bitcoin billionaires calling themselves The Five have appointed themselves to clean up America by personally killing people they think are ruining the country. Their first victims include a violent street criminal, a corrupt right wing congressman, and a rich woman who made herself richer by putting people out of work. We’re going to murder people who need to be murdered.” So begins a press release from a mysterious group known only as “The Five,” shortly after a vicious predator is murdered in San Francisco. The Five is believed to be made up of vigilante killers who are very bored… and very rich. They target the worst of society — rapists, murderers, and thieves — and then use their unlimited resources to offset the damage done by those who they’ve killed, donating untraceable Bitcoin to charities and victims via the dark net. The Five soon become the most popular figures on social media, a modern-day Batman…though their motives may not be entirely pure. John Sandfordis the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of thirty Prey novels,four Kidd novels, twelve Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels coauthored with his wife Michele Cook. Sandford story is told throughout from the point of view of both the chasers and the chased. The result is that it feels like we, the reader, are often a step ahead of the law enforcement agencies as the action plays out. We want to know about the Five and their targets. And Lucas and Virgil? Well, their interactions are sarcastically witty at times. They look out for each other and put themselves in precarious positions to get the bad guys. They work well together and really like each other, something you would expect from law enforcement officers with a history of solving crimes.

Book Review: Righteous Prey by John Sandford

Five millionaires meet at a Bitcoin conference and decide it might be a fun challenge to personally get rid of a few people who they think do not deserve to live for various reasons. What could go wrong?There are some political matters mentioned here. Although he doesn’t state any anti-Trump opinion there are references to people who are anti-Trump. Also at the end of the book Weather, the wife of Lucas Davenport, and Frankie, the wife of Virgil Flowers, are interviewed by the press. As always there is a sense of urgency to stop them before one more dead body is found while still delivering good humor and an interesting resolution. Danger stalks Lucas Davenport at work and all too close to home, in the superlative new thriller by the #1 New York Times-bestselling author. The extraordinary new Lucas Davenport thriller from #1 "New York Times"-bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner John Sandford. For me, the magic in this one their great interactions together throughout the entire book. From beginning to end they constant banter made me laugh out loud in fun and easy enjoyment. It didn’t matter whether it was amongst themselves or while interacting with others like FBI agents Orish and Mallard, their thoughts and comments were worth the price of admission.

Righteous Prey by John Sandford: 9780593422502

You can always rely on Sandford to serve up an imaginative plot, but with this novel I think he outdid himself. Two other things make Righteous Prey a notable addition to the series. First, it contains a lot of current events like the waning COVID pandemic, the growing prominence of Bitcoin, and current growing division and animosity between conservatives and liberals in the United States. The other is the side story about Virgil Flowers and his budding side gig as a crime fiction author. Both add interest to the story. This is vintage Davenport with a full slate of psychopathic evil doers and Lucas treating every murder investigation as a competition to be won.

After qualifying as a journalist, he started his career as an army reporter before joining The Miami Herald, where he eventually became an editor.

Righteous Prey - John Sandford Righteous Prey - John Sandford

Virgil is writing a mystery novel and so a couple of mystery writers are mentioned: John D. MacDonald, C.J.Box and Carl Hiaasen. Sandford also makes a veiled reference to another Twin Cities mystery writer that most people will identify as him. Virgil mentions that the cop in those mysteries never has to do paperwork. Letty Davenport, the brilliant and tenacious adopted daughter of Lucas Davenport, takes the investigative reins in the newest thriller from #1 bestselling author John Sandford. The story was originally published in the sports mystery anthology, Murder in the Rough: Original Tales of Bad Shots, Terrible Lies, and Other Deadly Handicaps from Today’s Great Writers (2006.) Lucas Davenport's old boss, Rose Marie Roux, has moved up to the state level and taken Lucas with her, creating a special troubleshooter job for him for the cases that are too complicated or politically touchy for others to handle. In addition, Lucas...In Righteous Prey, Sandford does a very good job of showing how even the best intentions/politics can be twisted by psychopathy into something deadly. The group of vigilantes at the heart of the novel are a bunch of bored, wealthy self-identifying “lefties”— sort of. It’s “left” in a very American way, in that they are against much of what the Republicans are for (guns, in particular). However, each of them is clearly messed up in their own ways, and decide to take it upon themselves to use that which they oppose to make their political points. It’s an intriguing premise, and one that Sandford pulls off rather well. It also takes us into the world of bitcoin millionaires — Sandford’s always been good at tapping into something contemporary that’s making waves/news, and injecting it into his novels in some way, while also passing comment on it. After the events in Gathering Prey, Lucas Davenport finds himself in a very unusual situation -- no longer employed by the Minnesota BCA. His friend the governor is just cranking up a presidential campaign, though, and he invites Lucas to come along ... John Sandford's popular character, Lucas Davenport, is the lead investigator of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Davenport first appeared in 1989's Rules of Prey. Since then, Sandford has written more than 20 Lucas Davenport novels. It starts in San Francisco followed by Houston. Each victim has a number on their forehead. When a woman is murdered in the Twin Cities Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers enter the investigation. The killings are well planned, carefully choreographed and there is no apparent connection to the victims. Lucas and Virgil have their work cut out for them.

The Investigator by John Sandford: 9780593714805

Overall, for me the good things about Davenport and Flowers made the book worth reading, but they didn’t fully outweigh the weak vigilante team opposing them. My guess is that most Sanford fans will find this an easy and fun read, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that. But for me, this will not be one of the more memorable ones from a mystery perspective. For now, I will just look forward to Virgil’s budding career as a mystery writer, as well as how he and Lucas will physically and emotionally recover from their climax ending experiences from this book. In 1978, he left the Herald to work as a reporter and columnist at St. Paul Pioneer Press, a job he stayed in for twelve years. John Sandford’s Righteous Prey is due to be published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in North America on October 4th, 2022. (At the time of writing, I couldn’t find any information about a UK edition, but previous novels by the author are published by Simon & Schuster, so I expect the same will be true for this one.) They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes -- they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them. Sandford has written fifty-five gripping titles to date, and if history is anything to go by, we can expect plenty more to come.

There are fourteen Virgil Flowers books to explore, with the most recent two crossing over from the Prey/Lucas Davenport series.