Twisted Prey

Starred review from March 12, 2018
At the start of bestseller Sandford’s thoroughly entertaining 28th novel featuring Lucas Davenport (after 2017’s Golden Prey), political consultant Cecily Whitehead is driving Porter Smalls, a former U.S. senator from Minnesota, back to Washington, D.C., from his cabin in West Virginia when a pickup truck plows into their vehicle, knocking it off the road down a steep hill. Smalls suffers only a bloody nose, but Whitehead dies. Smalls believes this was an assassination attempt organized by Sen. Taryn Grant, who used a shady operative to plant child pornography on his computer in their senate race two years earlier, which Grant narrowly won. Convinced that she views him as an obstacle to her planned run for the presidency, Smalls asks his friend Davenport, now a U.S. marshal, for help. Davenport, who’s certain that Grant has committed three murders but doesn’t have the proof, is only too happy to get another crack at her. Davenport and Grant, aided by their respective allies, engage in a deadly cat-and-mouse game that will keep the reader turning the pages up to the exciting climax. This long-running series shows no sign of losing steam. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

May 1, 2018
The last time Lucas Davenport tangled with Taryn Grant, she was running for the U.S. Senate. She eked out a narrow win over an incumbent, Porter Smalls, on the basis of a manufactured child-pornography scandal?and a couple of murders, too. Grant is rich, beautiful, smart, and a psychopath. Davenport was with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension back then, and he was unable to tie Grant to the murders. Smalls is now doing all he can to thwart Grant's presidential ambitions, but, while he is on a weekend tryst with a longtime lover, Smalls' car is purposely run off the road. He survives, but his lover doesn't. He's sure Grant is behind the accident and uses his clout to get Davenport, now a U.S. marshal, assigned to investigate. The latest Davenport novel is one of the best in an always-strong series. Given the current geopolitical reality, it's timely, too, and the conclusion is a rockin' didn't see that coming beauty.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)