He had felt this way not long before, sensed the curling of an indefinable evil, and not only had it nearly gotten him killed, it had lost him his fiance, who’d never been able to recover from the violence of the encounter. There were currents running through this group, hints and whispers of something much greater than the murder of a single man. But it wasn’t going to be that easy, he knew. If he read it in a book, Lucas Davenport thought, it would seem like one of those classic murder mysteries, the kind where the detective gathers everyone together at the end and solves the case with a little speech. Around him stood the four executives with whom he had been hunting, each with his or her own complicated agenda, each with a reason not to be sorrowful about the man’s death. The company chairman lay on the cold ground of the woods, his eyes unseeing, his orange hunting jacket punctured by a rifle bullet at close range. John Sandford has long been praised as one of the most gifted thriller writers at work in this country or any other Richmond Times Dispatch but this time he surpasses himself. It is the work of a true master.Įverybody has his secrets. John Sandford’s novels have always been extraordinary for their harrowing twists, unforgettable characters, and crackling prose. But for both her and Davenport, time is already running out. She knows the man who has taken her and her daughters, knows there is a chink in his armor, if only she can find it. With an urgency born of dread, he presses the attack, while in an isolated farmhouse, Andi Manette does the same, summoning all her skills to battle an obsessed captor. Hours later, deputy chief Lucas Davenport stood in the parking lot, a blood stained shoe in his hand, the ground stained pink around him, and knew that this would be one of the worst cases he’d ever been on. The last thing she did notice was the hand reaching out for her and the voice from out of the past and then the three of them were gone. She barely noticed the red van parked beside her, barely noticed the van door slide open as they dashed up to the car. It was raining when psychiatrist Andi Manette left the parent teacher conference with her two young daughters, and she was distracted. When Davenport who’s been revitalized by the case at last recovers the photo, the Iceman’s surprising identity is revealed, leading to a furious climactic chase on snowmobiles through dark woods and howling wind and to Davenport and the Iceman each having a tte…įrom the bestselling author of night prey and winter prey…Īn all new Lucas Davenport thriller. Meanwhile, the Iceman slays anyone who might know about the photo which, it turns out, shows him having sex with a local boy, his first victim: The Iceman heads a child porn ring. His investigation which hinges on retrieving the photo before the Iceman does stalls in the face of challenging puzzles centering on time of death and a seemingly reluctant witness, but it also butts him up against some marvelous characters, including a female M.D. Arriving in town, Davenport, who’s at loose ends in his life, finds himself facing two enemies: the Iceman, but also record cold and snow that’s frozen the town into a death trap.

When the bodies are found, the local sheriff calls in Davenport to help.

It’s a gruesome start, but Sandford splatters the gore mostly off page, relying on suspense and there’s plenty of it to jangle readers’ nerves. The killer, who calls himself the Iceman” for his sang froid, debuts in the creepy opening pages by stalking an isolated house, gunning down the woman inside, chopping up her husband, and torturing their daughter all in a failed attempt to retrieve an incriminating photo that’s fallen into the victims’ hands.

Ex cop and master gamesman Lucas Davenport takes on a crazed killer ravaging a small Wisconsin town.

Prey book series in order