JOHN SANDFORD - HIDDEN PREY

Ah, summertime... time to grab a glass of iced tea, kick off the flip-flops, and settle in with a good mystery. \'Tis the season for sequels in most of the series that I read. Hidden Prey, the latest in the \"Prey\" series by John Sandford, is just such a book.
The main character, Lucas Davenport, is a former homicide detective on the Minneapolis Police Department. He is now working as a statewide trouble shooter-- he \"fixes shit\" that might be too political or complicated for local police departments. He’s been married to Weather, a beautiful surgeon, for the last couple of books, and they now have an infant son.
The case involves the shooting of a Russian spy. Lucas and the FBI are brought in, along with Nadya, a Russian cop. She’s beautiful and intelligent, but Lucas doesn’t completely trust her, or her reasons for being in on the case. In an earlier book, Lucas would have probably been involved with her on a romantic level, but that is left to local cop Jerry Reasons. What they discover is very different from their original take on the case, as it is found that 50-year-old bullets were the cause of the spy’s death. Now, they must follow the clues back to the past in order to solve the murder.
Hidden Prey features a mellower Lucas Davenport than ever before. Maybe that’s why this book seems to be missing something. It just doesn’t seem as three-dimensional as the previous ones. If I hadn’t read the whole series, I’m not sure I would have liked it as well as I did. If you haven’t read any of the previous books, I wouldn’t recommend starting with this one. It would be much better to start back with the first book, Rules of Prey, and work forward from there.
Lucas Davenport has gone through a lot of changes to become the man that he is now. In spite of its weaknesses, I did find Hidden Prey to be a satisfying summer read.