
government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nonstop action, an offbeat milieu (the wide, weird world of computer gamesters), and a host of three-dimensional characters - all make for one of the best Preys yet.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Will Davenport (who's been lured into a couple of near-fatal traps by his crafty adversary) be able to engineer an endgame before the madman kills his three captives? And what can Manette and her children do to help save themselves from mortal peril? A shocking but credible climax provides most of the answers, and Davenport ties up the last loose ends in a satisfying postlude. The suspense and dread build steadily as Davenport closes in on Mail, who has been beating and raping Manette in a farmhouse well beyond the Twin Cities limits. The detective eventually realizes his quarry is getting inside information from someone in Manette's family circle, which includes her partner - a nasty piece of work who has been bedding down with the septuagenarian paterfamilias.
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A computer-game freak, Mail soon begins phoning Davenport (an off-duty entrepreneur who launched his own simulation software company) to taunt him with clues. Before the abductor's identity becomes apparent, however, Davenport needs to check out several suspects who might stand to gain from Manette's death. The kidnapper, a vicious but resourceful psychopath named John Mail, was once a patient of Manette's while confined in a state institution for the criminally insane.
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Because Manette is the daughter of an influential Minnesota poi and the estranged wife of a wealthy developer, Davenport, deputy chief of the Minneapolis PD, winds up in charge of the high-profile case.


Andi Manette, a carriage-trade psychiatrist, and her two young daughters are the victims of a violent daylight abduction. Sandford's talent for conveying the quotidian horrors, tedium, and heavy-handed humor of urban police procedure is as sure as ever in streetwise hero Lucas Davenport's seventh outing (Night Prey, 1994, etc.).
