Rules of Prey by John Sandford (Epub)

Description

The killer was mad but brilliant.

He left notes with every woman he killed. Rules of murder: Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. Never carry a weapon after it has been used…So many rules to his sick, violent games of death.

But Lucas Davenport, the cop who’s out to get him, isn’t playing by the rules.

User’s Reviews

From Publishers Weekly “Making his fiction debut, ‘Sandford,’ a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist using a pseudonym his real name is John Camp, has taken a stock suspense plot–a dedicated cop pursuing an ingenious serial killer–and dressed it up into the kind of pulse-quickening, irresistibly readable thriller that many of the genre’s best-known authors would be proud to call their own,” stated PW. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Review “Sandford delivers tense action, chilling excitement, and thrilling suspense. Fast-moving prose and romantic sidelines add a little zest, too.” –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Library Journal Lieutenant Lucas Davenport, highly touted killer detective, invents intricate video games that he sells for cash. Called in to aid the Minneapolis team scrambling to stop a psychopathic serial woman-slayer, Lucas almost meets his match. The self-styled “mad dog” murderer views his rape/stabbings as a game as well, setting up obstacles for the police, carefully selecting his victims, and priding himself on clever moves. Despite his largely deja vu plot, debut novelist Sandford ( also the author of The Fools Run due from Holt in September under the name John Camp; see Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/89) delivers tense action, chilling excitement, and thrilling suspense. Fast-moving prose and romantic sidelines add a little zest, too. BOMC featured selection.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ I’m not sure why this book got some many 5-stars. To me, as an ex-cop, the main character Lucas Davenport, is someone who would never exist within a law enforcement agency. His character is not real and the way the author paints him as someone operating outside normal police procedures is completely nonsensical. This book and character lost me when he went back to interview the victim of an attempted sexual assault and then during the interview, assaulted the victim all over again, supposedly for the purpose of getting her to recall “repressed” insights. Then, if that wasn’t weird enough, as he’s driving away from her apartment, sees her walking down the street, pulls up, and asks her out on a date!, (which in the real world, either of these actions would’ve gotten him FIRED). And of course, because he’s such an irresistible catch, she says YES! This after just having been traumatized all over again by the dude. Unbelievable. Add to this that he’s supposed to be a savant gaming developer and (as the author hammers into our head multiple times), drives a Porsche – – you start to understand this guy is narcissistic light weight and not someone you want to spend the length of an entire book ready about.

⭐ As a fan of Lee Child, John D. McDonald and Randy Wayne White, I was looking for a new series with a Jack Reacher, Travis McGee or Doc Ford character that would be the central character in each novel. In my opinion, Lucas Davenport doesn’t cut it. A detective that designs games as a second occupation, drives a Porsche and chases women indiscriminately just didn’t do it for me. The novel was just OK. This was the first book of the Lucas Davenport series. I subsequently tried the second book of the series (Shadow Prey) with similar results. John Sanford May be a decent author but he doesn’t compare with those listed above. The books drag and the suspense is minimal. It is hard to find Davenport anywhere as intriguing as Reacher, McGee or Ford.

⭐ I picked up a paperback version of Mind Prey some time ago. I was impressed. That led me to look for other books in the series. Starting with the first in the series, I was not disappointed. Sandford begins his novels with enough of a ‘hook’ to make the reader continue past a large number of characters at the outset. His word pictures put the reader in the story location, and his character descriptions make them very real. The bad guys are really bad, but definitely not shallow. The insight into a deranged killer’s mind and actions is troubling. Detective Lucas Davenport is a very different kind of cop. Like the hero we wish were really out there somewhere. His method of dealing with crime tends more toward Justice than being restrained by the law. The author’s depiction of the news media (although that was his career) is unfortunately accurate. The title, Rules of Prey, is accurate. The sadistic killer is brilliant, and follows rules to murder his victims. Lucas Davenport must detremine the rules and attempt to stop the serial killer. Dialogue is true to form for each character, with occasional bits of ‘humor’ added.

⭐ After reading (and reviewing here) 10 novels in John Sandford‘s two long-running series featuring Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers, which all told now number 34 and counting, I thought it would be amusing to turn back the clock to the very first book in the Davenport series, Rules of Prey. I was not disappointed.A serial killer makes the “rules”The first surprise in this series about a cop who always gains the upper hand is that the “rules” of the title are not Davenport’s creation but the taunting challenges of a twisted serial killer. Davenport, a detective lieutenant in the Minneapolis Police Department, has already achieved a reputation as the smartest detective in town. (His senior job at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension lies somewhere in his future.) Davenport has a wide network of informants throughout the city, gained during years as a vice cop, and the chief of police holds him in high esteem. He seems to get whatever he wants — but it’s not enough to catch the brutal serial murderer who leaves numbered notes on his victims spelling out the “rules” he follows to avoid capture.How a serial hero came to beIn an introduction to the Kindle edition, Sandford tells the diverting tale of how he turned to writing fiction to escape his increasingly tedious work as a newspaper reporter. (NB: he was no slouch. Sandford had won a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.) Rules of Prey was actually his second novel. He wrote it after his agent suggested, having sold his first, that he might be able to earn a living writing crime fiction. However, Sandford notes, “When I wrote Rules, it never really occurred to me that this one guy, Lucas Davenport, was going to be a second career for me.” But it’s not hard to see how this superior murder mystery gained the success on which he could build that career.The Lucas Davenport in Rules of Prey bears some resemblance to the more mature man who appears in the later novels, but there are differences. Here, Davenport beds practically every attractive woman who crosses his path, quite in contrast to the securely married man of the later novels. He is also a bad-ass, and when he breaks the rules, it’s not just to wave a fist at feckless bureaucrats but to act out in ways that should get him arrested. As Sandford notes, “Cops don’t act like Lucas Davenport [in Rules of Prey] — they’d be fired or even imprisoned if they did. They aren’t rich, they don’t drive Porsches, most could give a rat’s ass about fashion. Lucas Davenport does all that.” However, though he does already drive a Porsche, Davenport in Rules is working hard, nights and weekends, to earn the fortune that gives him the independence he flaunts in the later novels.

⭐ John Sandford has complex characters and a lot of them. He seems to know police procedures and police “personalities”. I have read several of the “Prey ” series since reading this book and intend to read the series in order. Sandford can juggle a lot o characters and make them all seem essential to the story. It is also a good way to keep the reader from quickly guessing “who dunnit”. Sandford ( John Camp) is a former journalist. This makes it all the more astounding that he is terrible with grammar and this is very off-putting. He (and his editors) don’t seem to know that “loan” is a noun and “lend” is the verb. He doesn’t seem to know that the verb “lie” is intransitive and the the verb “lay” is transitive. These are just two examples of his atrocious command of the language. You expect his street characters to butcher the language but not his educated characters or his omniscient narrator. For Pete’s sake, “importantly” is not a work in the English language. The word you want is “important”.

⭐ I’ve begun to wonder that if a novel’s cover includes “#1 NYT Bestselling Author,” I should just pass it by. I like dark thrillers and police procedurals (Nesbo, Connelly, McDonnell, Kerr, Lovesey, Adler-Olsen, etc) but not this one. It manufactures crises, spends more time on the central protagonist’s hit-skip relationships with various news reporters (all very sexy) and how they use each other shamelessly, occasionally to get the “bad guy,” but more often for personal advancement. There is little to admire in the lead dectective; of course, he is unrealistically operating independently, is also ho, irresistable bait for all the women, drives a Porsche, clears thousands of dollars at a racetrack, is a bang-up game developer, and beats up whoever crosses his purposes. And the serial killer is referred to throughout as the maddog, which tells you just how subtle his character types are.

⭐ I was introduced to the “Prey” series by a friend who lent me [/U]Twisted Prey[/u]. I was mesmerized by Lucas Davenport and wanted more. I am a bit on the anal-retentive side and some might say O.C.D., so I criticized my friend for starting me out on book 28 of what was then a 30-book series. He had never read [/U]Rules of Prey[/u], so I just “had to” find it. My library had a very old paperback which gave me some trouble, so I bought the Kindle version and soon became a Lucas Davenport fanatic. I have just finished reading [/U]Night Prey[/u] (#6), and I’m well on my way toward [U]Masked Prey[/u] (#30). The question remains whether I can read as fast as Chapman writes.The “Prey” series does not require one to read the books in order, but there are some characters who are met in one book and further developed in subsequent volumes. He drives a Porsche, which is an unusual ride for a cop — but, then, he is an unusual cop! He is not driving the Porsche in #28, so I don’t know what happened to it. I will soon find out!Maybe you’d like to find out also. Learn the rules and then go from there!

⭐ Lucas Davenport starts off as a bit of a James Bond type. From the first book: “He was slender and dark-complexioned, with straight black hair going gray at the temples and a long nose over a crooked smile. One of his central upper incisors had been chipped and he never had it capped. He might have been an Indian except for his blue eyes. His eyes were warm and forgiving. Though his eyes were warm, his smile betrayed him.If the chill of his smile sometimes overwhelmed the warmth of his eyes, it didn’t happen so frequently as to become a social handicap.”Rules of Prey is fast paced, dark novel pitting an unconventional policeman (Lucas Davenport) and an organized serial killer – who is quite smart. They called him “the maddog”. From the novel: “The maddog was intelligent. He was a member of the bar. He derived rules. Never kill anyone you know. Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. Never carry a weapon after it has been used. Isolate yourself from random discovery.Beware of leaving physical evidence.”The character development is extremely well done. The story is told in third person, enabling one to get into the minds of both cop and killer. This is unusual – we generally get just one or the other. It gets off the a fast start, and shows why Sandford was able to leverage this into a major series with a huge following. It probably took more time to write than later books, and was well thought out.There is a lot to like about Davenport. Davenport is a pretty believable cop. He doesn’t always solve the case. He is dependent on the back-up of his fellow boys (and girls) in blue. He’s also multi-dimensional. He spends much of his off-time playing role-playing games, including a Civil War game that he helped create.

⭐ As much as some serial killers think that they can continually outsmart authorities, they invariably make mistakes, inadvertently or not. This guy is so bold as to leave a new written “rule” with each victim – rules that he is positive will prevent his detection. But he didn’t count on one of his victims fighting him off. And like most people he had patterns to his behavior, waiting to be noticed.Det Lucas Davenport is not your typical cop. He is a thinker – he designs computer games, drives a Porsche, and is not unwilling to bend rules. He is just the kind of cop who is capable of finding and exploiting the weaknesses of a serial killer. It is interesting to watch Davenport slowly work his way to the identity of the serial killer, who perhaps was not quite as sharp as he thought.

⭐ Having just spent a week in Minneapolis, I was looking forward to reading Sandford’s book. The author has a crisp style to his writing, which speeds things along. That said, I believe the book was about 75 pages too long. I found the character of Lucas davenport to be pretty shallow. I’m no prude, but it’s not cool to be sleeping with other women when your girlfriend is pregnant. Maybe he grows up in future books, but I’m not curious enough to want to find out.

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