{"id":2484,"date":"2019-04-27T09:21:50","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T16:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2484"},"modified":"2019-04-27T09:21:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-27T16:21:50","slug":"a-taste-of-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2484","title":{"rendered":"A taste of violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson<\/p>\n

NEON PREY. By John Sandford. Penguin Audio. Red by Richard Ferrone. 11 \u00bd hours; 9 CDs. $40. Also available in print from G.P. Putnam\u2019s Sons.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There\u2019s no mystery why John Sandford\u2019s thrillers routinely make it to the top of the best-seller lists. They are tautly written, with intriguing surprises and twists and turns, yet always believable. The returning characters are police officers you like and admire, despite \u2013 or maybe because of \u2013 their quirks, human frailties and occasional unorthodox methods.<\/p>\n

This latest in the popular Prey series has Lucas Davenport, in his fairly recent role as a U.S. marshal, heading to Louisiana, Southern California and Las Vegas in pursuit of a very bad guy.<\/p>\n

Clayton Deese has operated pretty much under the radar for years, working for a big-time loan shark in New Orleans who uses him when someone needs a little unfriendly persuasion. But when he runs into trouble during what should have been a routine job, Deese winds up arrested. Once released, he soon jumps bail, and the marshals get involved. At first, their thinking is that Deese is relatively small fry and their main target is his boss. But as they start nosing around his remote hideout in the bayous, they discover that he\u2019s been killing and burying quite a few people for years.<\/p>\n

Then they discover that before he buries them, he\u2019s fond of removing a few choice cuts of their flesh to cook for dinner.<\/p>\n

Lucas and company find themselves on the trail of what quickly becomes the most notorious fugitive in America.<\/p>\n

That trail takes them to Southern California, where Deese seems to have taken up with what has been a pretty successful home-invasion gang involving his half brother.<\/p>\n

Lucas and company, including the FBI, use some good detective work to narrow down \u2013 almost \u2013 where Deese and the gang are living, and they arrange a raid with local police. It all seems almost too easy \u2013 until it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

After things go badly wrong, the pursuit takes a good while longer, eventually taking Lucas and the others to Las Vegas.\u00a0 Meanwhile, we learn that there is little if any honor or any other virtue among Deese and the thieves, as they turn on one another. Also meanwhile, they stage more crimes because they need money to support their bad habits.<\/p>\n

Be warned: Deese is one of the most thoroughly despicable criminals you can imagine, and it\u2019s unpleasant at times to read\/listen to some passages in the book.<\/p>\n

But the story is compelling, the settings \u2013 especially once the hunt moves to Vegas \u2013 are evocative, and the police work is intriguing.<\/p>\n

Sandford writes his thrillers so that each can be read and appreciated on its own, without having read those that lead up to it. There are recurring characters and mentions of past events and developments, but you don\u2019t feel lost or confused if you don\u2019t know everything.<\/p>\n

Richard Ferrone does a fine job of reading Neon Prey<\/em>. I usually read while driving, and my hands were gripping the wheel tightly with this one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson NEON PREY. By John Sandford. Penguin Audio. Red by Richard Ferrone. 11 \u00bd hours; 9 CDs. $40. Also available in print from G.P. Putnam\u2019s Sons. There\u2019s no mystery why John Sandford\u2019s thrillers routinely make it to the top of the best-seller lists. They are tautly written, with intriguing surprises and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5,1008,14],"tags":[820,560,692,561],"class_list":["post-2484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-mysteries","category-police-procedural","category-thriller-suspense","tag-audio-books","tag-john-sandford","tag-lucas-davenport","tag-prey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2486,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions\/2486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}