The Night Crew

Richard Ferrone is a regular reader of John Sandford books for Recorded Books. And he is a perfect fit for Sandford's raw thrillers. But The Night Crew is a bit different, with a female lead and male supporting characters. Rather than altering his normally gritty voice dramatically, Ferrone simply softens his presentation to match Anna Batorys's determined nature while leaving no doubt about the feminine side of this woman who is being stalked by a ruthless killer. His seamless delivery lets the listener flow freely with the twists and turns of this complex plot. Sandford and Ferrone make a great team. T.J.M. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

March 31, 1997
Anna Batory, thin and "rail-hard" with "pale blue killer eyes," runs a small, independent TV-news night crew that peddles clips of crime scenes, fires, car crashes and other mayhem to local TV stations for a tidy profit. As always with Sandford (Sudden Prey), the novel opens on action, in this case the crew's taping of a lab break-in by animal-rights activists and of a drug-crazed teenager's jump from a hotel window. The crew moves from voyeurs of the action to unwilling participants when Anna's part-time cameraman is shot dead and mutilated and a friend of his is murdered in an equally grisly manner. It becomes increasingly clear that a psycho is stalking Anna and her crew. To nail him, she teams up with the divorced father of the jumper, lawyer and ex-cop Jake Harper. Anna, Jake and another crew member and his new girlfriend are all attacked by the psycho before the gory finale. The shift from his usual Minneapolis setting to L.A. brings out the noir in Sandford ("the real dawn, a great, unhappy light, like an old piece of newspaper being pushed over the mountains"), and the action and suspense are up to his usual high standard. But Anna is neither as appealing nor as complex as his customary hero, Lucas Davenport, and other characters also seem grey at times, their movements perfunctory. One can't blame Sandford for wanting to try something new after eight "Prey" novels since 1989 (Sudden Prey, etc.), plus two thrillers under his real name, John Camp, but let's hope we haven't seen the last of Lucas. BOMC main selection; Putnam Berkley audio; author tour.

This conventional thriller, written in cinematic style, concerns the female head of an independent news video crew whose quest for a murderer takes her through some of the more dangerous and sordid L.A. back alleys. A normally compelling and likeable actor, Sanders is admirably tough; his impersonations are particularly good, especially that of the heroine. But he ignores the author's manipulation of mood and tempo. At times he's puzzlingly laconic, thus dissipating tension. The law of diminishing returns defeats him way before the last side. The listener is finished with the story before he finishes telling it. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine