Sandford's talent for conveying the quotidian horrors, tedium, and heavy-handed humor of urban police procedure is as sure as ever in streetwise hero Lucas Davenport's seventh outing (Night Prey, 1994, etc.). Andi Manette, a carriage-trade psychiatrist, and her two young daughters are the victims of a violent daylight abduction. Because Manette is the daughter of an influential Minnesota pol and the estranged wife of a wealthy developer, Davenport, deputy chief of the Minneapolis PD, winds up in charge of the high-profile case. The kidnapper, a vicious but resourceful psychopath named John Mail, was once a patient of Manette's while confined in a state institution for the criminally insane. Before the abductor's identity becomes apparent, however, Davenport needs to check out several suspects who might stand to gain from Manette's death. A computer-game freak, Mail soon begins phoning Davenport (an off-duty entrepreneur who launched his own simulation software company) to taunt him with clues. The detective eventually realizes his quarry is getting inside information from someone in Manette's family circle, which includes her partner – a nasty piece of work who has been bedding down with the septuagenarian paterfamilias. The suspense and dread build steadily as Davenport closes in on Mail, who has been beating and raping Manette in a farmhouse well beyond the Twin Cities limits. Will Davenport (who's been lured into a couple of near-fatal traps by his crafty adversary) be able to engineer an endgame before the madman kills his three captives? And what can Manette and her children do to help save themselves from mortal peril? A shocking but credible climax provides most of the answers, and Davenport ties up the last loose ends in a satisfying postlude. Nonstop action, an offbeat milieu (the wide, weird world of computer gamesters), and a host of three-dimensional characters &3150; all make for one of the best Preys yet.

Minneapolis PD Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport, seen last in Night Prey, carries on as a smart, quirky hero in the seventh Prey book. When psychiatrist Andi Manette and her two young daughters are kidnapped, Lucas must discover whether it's a ransom snatch, the work of one of Andi's ex-patients or the ruse of someone in her life who might benefit from her death. (Her father, stepmother, estranged husband and medical partner are all good suspects.) Readers know the kidnapper is John Mail, a scary ex-patient who's entertained nasty dreams of Andi for years. He enacts his violent sex fantasies with the imprisoned Andi; it seems only a matter of time before he will go after the girls. Lucas, meanwhile, draws on all available resources, including his own computer game company, to flush out Mail, a gamer who enjoys taunting Lucas with phone calls. During this time, Andi has been trying to maintain an element of control and contrive an escape. Sandford expertly ratchets up the suspense from beginning to the brutal finish. Lucas does get his villain, but no one comes out of this experience unscarred.