Lucas Davenport & Virgil Flowers team up to crack an unsolvable case…

Alex Sand was spending the evening at home playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. A wealthy federal judge, there’s no short list of people who could have a vendetta against Sands, but the gruesome murders, especially that of his children, turn their St. Paul community on its head. Sand was on the verge of a major donation to a local housing charity, Heart/Twin Cities, and with the money in limbo, eyes suddenly turn to his grieving widow, Margaret Cooper, to see what she might do with the money. Margaret, distraught over the death of her family, struggles to move forward, and can’t imagine how or why anyone would target her husband.

With public pressure mounting and both the local police force and FBI hitting dead end after dead end, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to do what others could not: find answers. With each potential lead flawed, Davenport and Flowers are determined to chase every theory until they figure out who killed the Sands. But when they find themselves being stonewalled by the most unlikely of forces, the two wonder if perhaps each misdirection could lead them closer to the truth.

In Judgment Prey, the 33rd novel in John Sandford’s best-selling Prey series, star investigators Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are convalescing back in Minnesota and Wisconsin, after being injured during their most recent case. A strange murder, however, has them brought in to. Sandford remains one of the most consistently good crime writers, and I thoroughly enjoyed this.

After a number of books that saw Davenport travelling all over the United States as a U.S. Marshall, he is back in Minnesota. After the events of Righteous Prey, he was grievously wounded, as was his oft-partner, Virgil Flowers. The two of them are chafing a bit at being idle — Davenport more so than Flowers, was the latter is developing a side-career as an author. After the murder of Sands and his sons, Lucas finds himself drawn into the case and convinces Flowers to join him. There’s something… off about the crime, as well as a few of the players involved and in Sands’s orbit, and the Minnesota BCA could really use the help of two of the best investigators in the region.

As with all of Sandford’s novels, I very quickly got swept up by the story — true, I’ve read almost all of Sandford’s novels, and am therefore very familiar with the characters and setting, but the author’s prose is so well-crafted and flows so well, that it’s next to impossible to read just one chapter, or for just a few minutes. The relationships are so well drawn, and the banter between Davenport and Flowers is pitch-perfect and often amusing. The author throws in plenty of twists, and a couple of red herrings, which keeps the investigators on their toes. As with most of his most recent novels, there is a lot more going on than it might first appear, and Davenport’s investigation ends up setting off a series of events otherwise disconnected to the crime — as is all too often the case, human greed and insecurity lead certain individuals to misconstrue what is happening, which in turn leads to overreactions with sometimes deadly consequences.

If you’re already a fan of Sandford’s books, then I have no doubt that you will be eager to pick this up if you haven’t already. If you are new to Sandford’s work, but are a fan of crime and mystery novels, then I would highly recommend the Prey, Virgil Flowers, and new Letty Davenport series — each of them is excellent.

The 34th novel in the series, Toxic Prey, is due to be published in April 2024, by G. P. Putnam’s Sons — and I can’t wait to read it.

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John Sandford’s Judgment Prey is out now, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in North America

Also on CR: Reviews of The Investigator, Dark Angel, Phantom Prey, Wicked Prey, Storm Prey, Buried Prey, Stolen Prey, Silken Prey, Field of Prey, Golden Prey, Neon Prey, Masked Prey, Righteous Prey, and Dark of the Moon

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Review copy received from publisher