Toxic Prey by John Sandford

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on April 9, 2024

Readers never know what they’ll get from John Sandford, but they know it will be good. Some of his crime novels are light and a little goofy. Some of his books are dark, although he often lightens the mood with humor. All of his books are quick reads, but some depend on action more than others. I’ve read a lot of Sandford’s novels, enjoyed them all, but I can’t think of one that hit me as hard as Toxic Prey. It might be his best work.

Other people have written thrillers about terrorists weaponizing viruses. They became particularly popular after COVID. Before that, novels like The Andromeda Strain (still the classic in the subgenre of outbreak novels) imagined heroic efforts to contain the natural spread of viral infections (although the virus in that novel had an extraterrestrial origin). Toxic Prey is a variation on the theme.

The virus has been engineered — the Marburg virus is married to a measles virus so that one of the world’s deadliest diseases will become much more infectious — and the person who plans to spread it isn’t a conventional terrorist. Lionel Scott is a British doctor who wants to save the world by killing most of the people who are destroying it — people who drive or use air conditioning. Yeah, I know we’re bad, but killing 80% of us seems a bit extreme.

Scott subscribes to the Gaia hypothesis (some aspects of which have a certain appeal), but his work with Doctors Without Borders has left him depressed and traumatized. Scott has been working with the US military to devise ways to make viruses more deadly. The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (the place where Oppenheimer worked) both research deadly diseases, supposedly to protect public health. Whether they also try to weaponize viruses is, not surprisingly, a military secret.

Letty Davenport (who sort of works for Homeland Security) is sent to England to interview people who know Scott after Scott goes missing. She liaisons with Alec Hawkins of MI5. Before long they are liaising in bed. What they learn about Scott is concerning, so Letty returns to the US, where she is assigned to find him. When she acquires evidence that Scott has been experimenting with a weaponized virus, she gets Hawkins to join her and enlists the help of her father (Lucas Davenport, who stars in a series of his own), another federal Marshal who works with Lucas, and a sniper who has appeared in recent novels when people need to be killed from a distance.

Most bioterrorism novels (as opposed to natural outbreak novels) aren’t convincing. This one is both plausible and chilling. The story moves quickly from start to finish, building suspense as the good guys work out realistic strategies to find Scott and the handful of people he has recruited to his cause. All the good guys are at risk of dying from exposure to the virus. Sandford creates credible fear that they might need to sacrifice themselves to save the world.

I don’t like to use review clichés like “gripping” or “riveting,” but those are the best words to describe the emotional investment that I made in the story. The “wow” factor is undeniable. Kudos to Sandford for producing such a powerful thriller after writing more than fifty novels. Some successful writers are just coasting late in their careers. Sandford just seems to get better.

RECOMMENDED

Judgment Prey by John Sandford

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on October 3, 2023

This is a Prey novel, so Lucas Davenport is the featured character. As is increasingly common in Prey novels, Virgil Flowers plays a nearly equal role. John Sandford published his last standalone Flowers novel in 2019. Since then, he’s published four Lucas Davenport and two Letty Davenport novels. Virgil can’t complain about a lack of love because he gets cameos in the Letty novels (just as Letty earned a cameo in this one) and is increasingly likely to be a co-star in the Lucas novels.

Virgil is hoping to transition away from law enforcement. He sold a novel that is about to be published and is working on another. Virgil tells Lucas that a writer told him that “books have three parts: the set-up and the climax, and then in the middle, the swamp.” Sandford is a master of the swamp — the characters and subplots that keep the reader entertained while awaiting the big reveal that drives mysteries or the final confrontation that drives thrillers.

The set-up in Judgment Prey is simple. Two boys and their dad are shooting hoops in the back yard. They go inside when it starts to rain. Someone in a hoodie follows them inside, shoots them all (not with the efficiency of a professional), spares a baby in a basinet, and leaves with their cellphones and laptops. The dad is a federal judge so the FBI joins the investigation. Lucas is asked to show the flag for the U.S. Marshals since protecting judges is part of their remit. Flowers shows up on behalf of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The St. Paul police do most of the legwork but Davenport and Flowers team up to look for the clues that other cops miss.

The plot differs from many crime novels in that the killer’s identity is soon known to the reader. The novel is not a whodunit. Instead, the reveal explains the killer's motive, a key that must be unlocked before Lucas and Virgil can solve the crime.

The judge’s wife, Maggie Cooper, is understandably distraught and ultimately vengeful. She intends to find the killer and end his life. To that end, she receives moral support from her best friend, Ann Melton, with whom she occasionally has sex. Whether Maggie will kill the killer before Lucas and Virgil catch him, or whether he will add Maggie to his list of victims, is the source of the novel's dramatic tension.

The swamp involves the investigation of people who might have a motive to kill the judge, including criminals he has sentenced. Davenport and Flowers also look into a charitable organization that was expecting a donation from the judge. The organization turns out to be shady, leading to a collateral investigation that prompts a couple more murders. The killer also comes after

Characterization is typically built in the swamp. The have been so many Prey novels (not to mention Flowers novels) that the characters are now well known. The swamp instead gives them a chance to find new ways to insult each other. That never gets old.

The motive for killing the judge and his family struck me as unlikely, but people kill for unlikely reasons so I’ll give Sandford’s reveal a pass. Otherwise, the climax involves the kind of action that is common to Prey novels, complete with chases and gunplay. That climax doesn’t quite resolve the main plot, but a second climax does. All of this is great fun for a John Sandford fan, which presumably includes most readers who enjoy crime novels. Judgment Prey doesn’t stand out from the large stack of Prey novels, but even an average Prey novel is worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

Dark Angel by John Sandford

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on April 11, 2023

Letty Davenport saved the war for Ukraine. Who knew?

The Letty Davenport series is similar to the Prey series that stars her father. The books tend to be gritty, unlike John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers novels, which mix in a larger amount of humor. Still, even Sandford’s darker novels are lightly seasoned with humor. Most of the humor in Dark Angel comes from snarky asides as characters rib each other, although Sandford also milks a team of hackers who devour microwave burritos for laughs. Burritos aside, the story’s focus is on good guys killing bad guys. The action becomes more intense as the story builds to a high-energy climax.

Letty works for a senator who loans her to Homeland Security in an odd disregard for the separation of powers. Letty is working on a stakeout involving the theft of government property when she meets a CIA agent who introduces herself as Cartwright. After the mission is completed, Cartwright invites Letty to join a social group consisting of women who are good with guns.

Letty is next assigned to infiltrate a West Coast group of computer geeks who reputedly hacked into the software that runs Russia’s train systems. While Letty is told that the group plans a ransomware attack on a natural gas provider in the Midwest, her handlers seem to have a greater interest in Russia’s trains. That interest coincides with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The American government wants to maintain deniability, but having rogue hackers rerouting trains that carry Russian military supplies would be a nice way to stick it to Putin.

Letty doesn’t need to know anything about hacking because her job is to protect someone who does. She is sufficiently young and hot to pass as a successful hacker’s girlfriend. The hacker is an overweight guy who helps out the NSA with his specialized knowledge of machine control software. He isn’t Letty’s type but they learn how to work together by establishing a cover as they drive from Florida to California. After arriving at their destination, they make a couple of contacts, engage in a bit of blackmail, and gain credibility by helping hackers who plan to take down a right-wing hate site. Their efforts lead them to the hacker they need to meet.

When they're not stealing the latest Intel chips, Russian assets are also looking for the train hackers, leading to the novel’s first significant bit of violence. Guns are drawn or fired repeatedly as the story progresses, culminating in attacks on the hacker group because it is trying to make life better for Ukraine. Since the government doesn’t want to involve its own actors (and wants to conceal its involvement from the FBI and local police), Letty recruits members of the women’s shooter group to help protect the hackers. Mayhem ensues.

Sandford never fails to entertain. He tells dark stories in a breezy style, crafts plots that move quickly and in surprising directions without causing confusion, and creates likable characters who are fundamentally decent without becoming saccharine. Some of his stories are enlivened by current events, but this is the first I’ve seen that allows a character to stick it to a foreign leader. Given the mess that the Russian Army made of Putin's invasion, Sandford's take on how American intelligence operatives might have contributed to the disaster comes across as plausible. That makes Dark Angel even more enjoyable.

RECOMMENDED

Righteous Prey by John Sandford

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on October 4, 2022

Righteous Prey is a Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers crossover novel. Davenport novels are usually a bit darker than Flowers novels. Righteous Prey is essentially a buddy novel that balances humor and darkness. Davenport and Flowers banter their way through the plot as they try to stop five killers who are targeting assholes. The reader might have trouble deciding whether to cheer for the killers or for the cops.

Five billionaires who became wealthy through bitcoin investments are bored. They meet Vivian Zhao at a bitcoin convention. Zhao persuades them that the country is full of assholes who need killing and that people with money and time on their hands are well positioned to kill them. Zhao doesn’t have money of her own but she’s full of anger, largely because she doesn’t have money of her own. She’s taking out her anger on assholes by organizing a group that identifies itself as The Five. Each killing is accompanied by a press release taking credit for making the world a better place, one asshole at a time.

Readers who condemn John Sandford for being liberal (Amazon “reviews” suggest that those readers are plentiful) might be happy to learn that the killers are liberals. They are, at least, fed up with conservative and/or racist assholes. One victim is a criminal who preys on elderly Asians. One is a corrupt Texas politician who rails against migrants. One operates a hedge fund that acquires businesses and fires their employees. One might as well be Alex Jones.

Sandford likes to play with the professional rivalries between the FBI, the federal Marshals, and state or local cops. The “real cops” view the FBI’s “Special Agents” as useless, a perception that Sandford borrows from the real world. In this novel as in many of Sandford’s, all law enforcers not named Davenport or Flowers are just getting in the way.

The novel makes a strong indictment of bump stocks (as did the shooter in the Las Vegas massacre), not that the NRA or Republican state attorneys general care about mass shootings. To a lesser extent (primarily through a brief televised appearance by the wives of Davenport and Flowers), the novel spotlights ghost guns and suppressors, contributors to gun violence that don’t seem to be on any national politician’s radar.

The plot’s lighter side focuses on banter about Flowers’ fledgling career as a thriller novelist. He is finishing his second novel and just signed a contract for a third. I enjoyed the Inside Baseball view of publishing — just enough information to offer a glimpse of writing as a profession without bogging down the story. The best advice Flowers gets is from another cop: “Don’t make your hero into superman. . . . You know, they’re in thirty-two gunfights in three days against a hundred terrorists and get a flesh wound in the shoulder.” That’s a pet peeve I share, although it’s even worse in movies than in novels.

Fortunately, Sandford limits the shootouts but still manages to keep the story in motion. Action doesn’t always need to consist of gunplay and fistfights, although there is a realistic gunfight at the novel’s end. Sandford is never afraid to have Lucas and/or Flowers sustain more than a flesh wound, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t discuss the battle’s outcome. It suffices to say that this is a thriller with real thrills and that bullets fired rapidly with a bump stock have consequences.

There isn’t much to say about a Sandford novel. They’re always compulsively readable. This one is no exception. The Inside Baseball paragraphs about writing explain how to make a decent income writing thrillers. Not everyone can do it. Sandford deserves every penny he earns.

RECOMMENDED

The Investigator by John Sandford

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on April 12, 2022

John Sandford has never been a friend to readers on the far right. Some readers made that clear in Amazon “reviews” of Lucas Davenport novels in which Davenport prevented the assassination of a female Democrat who was running for the presidency and tackled threats from white supremacists. The “reviews” portrayed Sandford as a propogandist for the far left despite his love of guns, the value he places on law enforcement, and his apolitical approach to p4otagonists. Readers who value thrillers that paint everyone from the Middle East as evil incarnate while pretending domestic threats only come from “antifa” will probably want to stay away from Sandford, notwithstanding (or because of) the political centrism he brings to his novels.

The Investigator is the first novel to star Letty Davenport. Letty is Lucas’ adopted daughter. She has many of Lucas’ traits. She loves guns and isn’t bothered when she kills people, although she doesn’t kill them indiscriminately. She’s not much interested in most people who don’t work for law enforcement. She’s really not fond of violent extremists.

Letty is working in an internship for a senator who assigns her to work as a Senate investigator attached to Homeland Security because of her unique skills, including her willingness to conduct searches for which the police would need a warrant. She works with a former Delta, now a Homeland Security agent, to track down a threat posed by multiple militias in Texas. The militia leader, Jane Jael Hawkes, has a problem with migrants. Hawkes' own militia sometimes kills “illegals” rather than helping the Border Patrol take them into custody. Now she’s purchased stolen C4 and has teamed up with other militias to do something nefarious. It is clear to the reader that the nefarious act will have something about a caravan that is moving through Mexico on its way to a town in Texas that might offer refugee status to the travelers. Hawkes and her followers brand any political leader who would allow refugees into the country as "traitors."

The Investigator is chilling because the story’s foundation is convincing. You only need to dive into the comment sections of any mainstream news site/blog to understand how many people in this country prefer lies to facts, bigotry to tolerance, and guns to reason. They blame everyone but themselves for their circumstances. While their complaints about “elites” or “rich people” might be founded in the real world, they expand their grievances to include powerless individuals, including migrants, who cause them no harm. The powerless are easier to threaten or beat or kill than the powerful corporate leaders who ship jobs overseas while convincing workers that unions will somehow make their miserable jobs worse. People harboring irrational grievances who believe problems can be solved with guns are easily manipulated. The Investigator illustrates how easily manipulation might lead to tragedy.

Sandford’s fans know that Lucas Davenport novels can be dark while Virgil Flowers novels tend to be a bit lighter. The Investigator is on the darker side. Sandford’s dialog is always characterized by characters taking friendly shots at each other. Letty and her DHS partner do the same as they bond, but that dialog offers the only humor in a novel that takes the threat of domestic terrorism seriously.

Letty’s initial investigation give the novel the feel of detective fiction. The story gradually transitions to an action novel as Letty and her Homeland Security sidekick, without any of the superhuman antics of tough guy thriller heroes, take on the militias that have invaded a Texas town. The combination of investigation and action has served Sandford well. It is particularly effective in The Investigator. High-octane action and smart plot combine to make The Investigator one of my favorite Sandford novels. Sandford can probably make any character carry a series, but Letty clearly has what it takes to star in future novels.

RECOMMENDED