Chosen Prey by John Sandford (Davenport #12)

Alas, we went back to the format of knowing what the psychotic killer is thinking and doing since book #11.  And yes, the guy is a scumbag of the worst kind.  Not even a bad buy the reader can emphasize with.  You want him caught, and you want him caught now.

The downside to Chosen Prey is our killer seems to be one step ahead of the police.  I've noticed this pattern in previous books:  something alerts the killer by accident that the police might be looking for him, the murderer does a few things to hide evidence, the police actually meet the psychopath but only the creep knows it, then ah ha! Davenport has a strong hunch he knows who done it and puts a tail on our perp.  But guess what! Yes! The perp figures out he's being tailed and slips the net!  Oh no!

And so on and so forth till we come to our Big Dramatic Conclusion, or in this case, Big Let Down because I saw the ending(s) coming much like a severe thunderstorm sports tornadoes on the prairie during July. 

The one other item that distracted me a bit was we've moved forward a solid year since book 11: where Davenport had a college friend wanting to get in his pants, was screwing a potter, and had his ex-fiance making noises like she wanted to get back together.  Book 11 left off on a bit of a cliff hanger, which was not really picked up here because we find that Weather has overcome all of her issues and is now talking baby.  Whaa?  It felt like a lot was just kinda skipped to move the Weather/Davenport personal issues forward. 

Not one of my favorites because the plot and characters were so transparent to me in this book.