A Book A Week

With so many books coming my way each year, it can be hard to devote time to reading a series. There are just so many books to read with never enough time to read them all.  This means that I usually don't keep up with a series beyond the first installment. However, when it comes to John Sandford's Virgil Flowers series, I can't help but look forward to the next novel. No matter what I'm supposed to be reading, I always carve out a few days to devour his latest. I was a bit surprised when Sandford's publisher sent me his latest novel featuring his other long-time hero Lucas Davenport. I've read the first novel to feature Davenport, but I've never kept up with the other 29 Prey novels. When I found out that Ocean Prey happened to feature Virgil Flowers too, all made sense, and I quickly began reading. 

The book opens with a bang. An off-duty Coast Guardsman stumbles upon a crime in action, just off the coast of Florida. A group of drug runners is pulling up large canisters from the ocean floor, filled with what has to be drugs. When the coast guard intervenes, a gunfight breaks out leaving 3 officers dead, the drug smuggling boat torched, drug-filled canisters on the bottom of the sea, and no real leads as to who was behind the crime. An FBI-led task force struggles with the case for weeks before they finally call in the support of US Marshall Lucas Davenport. Davenport has a reputation for discreetly blurring the lines between lawful investigation and downright intimidation, but one thing is certain. Davenport knows how to get results. 

As the full scope of the case unfolds, Davenport begins to worry that their task force is outmatched. A mid-novel ambush reveals those worries to be true, and Davenport is forced to call in more support. His old buddy from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Virgil Flowers is a natural choice. Flowers is about as unconventional of an investigator as they come. Flowers's hippy cowboy appearance and willingness to follow whatever unorthodox plan Davenport conceives makes him the perfect candidate to go undercover and infiltrate the suspected drug lords. His familiarity with boating and diving also makes him uniquely qualified to be exactly the kind of person the suspects are looking for. After all, there are still millions of dollars worth of drugs lying on the ocean floor. With the combined experience and wit of both Davenport and Flowers, justice just might come to fruition. 

With Ocean Prey John Sandford proves why he remains one of my favorite crime authors writing today. Despite not being as familiar with his Davenport character, I easily fell into the story and began rooting for him from the start. The addition of Virgil Flowers to the novel adds a welcomed change of pace to the second half of the story and serves to raise the stakes and suspense level. Still, I'd hesitate to actually call this book a Virgil Flowers novel. His appearance is more of an extended cameo to the Davenport story than anything else. Nevertheless, Sandford knows how to write a twisted thriller that keeps you on your toes until the very end. The underwater scenes in particular really kept the pages turning in a way that I haven't experienced in his writing before. Clever plotting combined with two of the most fun and intriguing heroes in modern crime fiction make Ocean Prey a worthy addition to both the Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers series. 

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2021, 15)