WOW! Pretty messed up book!
Hello, my lovely peeps🐥!
Today’s post is a review for the third book in the Prey series, Eyes of Prey by John Sandford! I actually started to read this as I was reading Ocean Prey and to see and compare the young[er] Davenport to the current and older one was pretty fascinating to say the least.
Still, I had a blast with this book and one of my best reads of 2022 so far!
Book Description
Title: Eyes of Prey
Series: Lucas Davenport / Prey Series Book: 3
Author: John Sandford
Edition: Ebook > Libby
Length: 357 Pages
Genre/s: Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Suspense
Rating: 5 Golden Eggs
Blurb (Goodreads)
Lieutenant Davenport’s sanity was nearly shattered by two murder investigations. Now he faces something worse…Two killers. One hideously scarred. The other strikingly handsome, a master manipulator fascinated with all aspects of death. The dark mirror of Davenport’s soul…This is the case that will bring Davenport back to life. Or push him over the edge.
Review
Eyes of Prey is the third installation of the, soon to be, 32 book long Prey series by John Sandford and it focuses on a younger Lucas Davenport from back when he worked in the police as Minneapolis’ detective lieutenant. Having barely scrapped by a serial killer followed by a group of killers resulting in his daughter’s injury and his partner, Jennifer, to take their kid and go off, it’s been a hard hard time for Davenport. He’s majorly depressed and starts his side of the story off by pummeling a teen, for injuring one of his best snitches, someone who was so close to Davenport, she was “almost a friend”.
The story starts off with Stephanie Bekker, the wife of Dr. Bekker, who is killed one night, her face destroyed in the act of violence, and her eyes mutilated. A narc, by the name of Del Capslock, was there with Davenport when he beats the living hell out of the teen, and just manages to drag Davenport away before things escalate even further. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help with the internal affairs claim that shortly follows, parents of the teen accusing Davenport of police brutality with no good proof…
Everyone’s worried about the poor guy and to help him back into the game, his boss, Daniel, suggests that Davenport take up the case of Stephanie Bekker, coupled with the fact that she was Del’s cousin and this would be helping him get to the bottom of things. It’s an intriguing case for sure, the eyes were of special interest. No lover’s quarrel would usually result in eye gouging or mutilations…
Davenport agrees to just take a look into the case, but eventually finds himself very very deep in the craziest of crazy cases as he finds himself with not just one, but perhaps two people working together and of the two, at least one of them was batshit crazy. More and more bodies begin to show up, seemingly connected to the Stephanie Bekker case; all victims with their eyes either destroyed or gouged out.
I couldn’t get into this book at first. It felt slow and I didn’t know where it was going to go. Here, we are slowly [re]introduced to more characters that eventually come back again and again in the series, people like Sloan and Del. But the main point is not Davenport, or any of the good guys. Sure, he makes for a pretty good, pushing the boundaries, kind of detective, and while I love the main characters in both the Prey and Virgil Flowers series, this time I was much more interested in the killers. As things picked up, I found myself unable to back out and found none of the earlier hesitation I had when I’d first started reading.
This time, the highlight is on two killers, both awful in their own ways, but one of them is nuts while the other is somewhat more pitiable. Their names are immediately given away in the first chapter, but occasionally, Sandford refers back to them simply as “Beauty” and the “Troll” and to avoid spoilers, I’ll call them as such here too. Complete opposites, night and day, one of the killer is beautiful, so beautiful that Sandford points out multiple times through the story just how beautiful he is, either via other characters or by “Beauty” checking himself out in the mirror. The other killer works with “Beauty” and is nicknamed “Troll” for his disfigured face from a childhood burn incident, the main muscle of the duo compared to “Beauty”‘s brain behind the plans. The “Troll” is more apathetic towards the killings while “Beauty” is elated, nearly ecstatic. His own colleagues at work secretly call him Dr. Death!
I thought that “Troll” was slightly less interesting, although I felt just an ounce bit of sympathy towards him since he’s pretty much never had a friend in his life and had simply gravitated towards “Beauty” and with every successful killing and with “Beauty”‘s praise, “Troll” seemed to smile with happiness and that made me feel a little sad (still awful people though).
Of the pair, the more interesting character is “Beauty.” A doctor who self-prescribes enough drugs to kill a field of elephants, this guy’s downing pill after pill and is simply insane. I joked halfway through the book that Eyes of Prey‘s “Beauty” was a walking “Don’t Do Drugs Kids” commercial. He goes after kids, the elderly, anyone. It doesn’t matter, so long as he can watch as they pass away, stare into their eyes as they experience their last minutes. There are some terrible terrible moments in this book. He does a little “jig” dance every time he experiences a high of some sorts; sometimes from a drug high and others from watching people die. Already unhinged from the start, his mental decline from the beginning to the end was terrifying to watch.
The book takes some massive turns and there are twists everywhere, right up to the very end with the book finishing off on a plot twisting last sentence. A fantastic book and of the handful of Davenport books I’ve read so far, this has probably been the best one yet. My emotions were all over the place, heart soaring and dropping with every few chapters, especially towards the end.
I already have a favorite Sandford book (Shock Wave), and in Ocean Prey‘s review, I remarked that that had been a close second, but now, I think Eyes of Prey beats even Ocean Prey, maybe even Shock Wave! Still, there are a little over 25 books I have yet to read in the Prey series and it’s still too early to pick favorites.
Midway through Eyes of Prey, I’d begun to schedule my March and April reads. I had picked up and read the blurb of book 4 so it kind of spoiled book 3 here, but nevertheless, I cannot wait to see how things will follow, especially with how Eyes of Prey ended.
5 Shiny Shiny Eggs