Masked Prey by John SandfordMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jacket blurb: Lucas Davenport investigates a vitriolic blog that seems to be targeting the children of U.S. politicians in the latest thriller by #1 New York Times-bestselling author John Sandford.
The daughter of a U.S. Senator is monitoring her social media presence when she finds a picture of herself on a strange blog. And there are other pictures . . . of the children of other influential Washington politicians, walking or standing outside their schools, each identified by name. Surrounding the photos are texts of vicious political rants from a motley variety of radical groups.
It's obviously alarming--is there an unstable extremist tracking the loved ones of powerful politicians with deadly intent? But when the FBI is called in, there isn't much the feds can do. The anonymous photographer can't be pinned down to one location or IP address, and more importantly, at least to the paper-processing bureaucrats, no crime has actually been committed. With nowhere else to turn, influential Senators decide to call in someone who can operate outside the FBI's constraints: Lucas Davenport.
Read as an audio book. I love the narrator's performance for these books and I won't read them any other way.
I'm not going to rehash the plot or premise of Masked Prey - plenty of other reviews to read for that along with the jacket blurb.
I'm at odds with what to write with this latest installment. On one hand, it's classic Lucas Davenport. There's no secret to the what the protagonist is doing, the only "mystery" is in how Lucas is going to solve the problem. And in Masked Prey, even that was revealed fairly early on.
Which brings me round to my conundrum - I could see everything coming down the proverbial train tracks as if I were standing on a hill in North Dakota. There was no "suspense" in this. The mystery of the 1919 Website - obvious. Lucas's intent - obvious. Resolution - absolutely no surprise. Yet...there are a few moral questions that this book raises and our main characters darker side is brought to light which is something the series hasn't shown in a while. So while the story just putters along, there's some interesting undertones happening that take a while to sink in.
Rest assured, Rae (sp? downside of audio) and Bob make an appearance. Albeit a short one that serves the purpose of setting up the ending. Still, they come in with guns and snark a plenty which I always look forward to.
Ultimately, I found this to be a middle of the road "read". The plot held my attention, there were no surprises, all the important characters made an appearance, and the narrator continues to do a splendid job. Recommended if you've read the first twenty-nine books.
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