Book Review: Lethal Prey by John Sandford

Happy Thursday, my lovely peeps!
For this week’s book review, I’ll be featuring Lethal Prey, the 35th Prey book by John Sandford!

Title: Lethal Prey
Series/Book No.: Prey Series #35
Author: John Sandford
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Suspense, Action, Police Procedural
Length: 391 Pages [Kindle]
Published: 25 March, 2025 [G.P. Putnam’s Sons]
Links:
Goodreads: [HERE]
Amazon: [HERE]

Disclaimer: An e-Copy (NetGalley) of this book was provided to me in exchange for a fair and honest review. This does not impact the review and all opinions are my own.

Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers join forces to track down a ruthless killer who will do whatever it takes to keep the past buried.

Doris Grandfelt, an employee at an accounting firm, was brutally stabbed to death . . . but nobody knew exactly where the crime took place. Her body was found the next night, dumped among a dense thicket of trees along the edge of an urban park, eight miles east of St. Paul, Minnesota. Despite her twin sister Lara Grandfelt’s persistent calls to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the killer was never found.

Twenty years later, Lara has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Confronted with the possibility of her own death, she’s determined to find Doris’s killer once and for all. Finally taking matters into her own hands, she dumps the entire investigative file on every true-crime site in the world and offers a $5 million reward for information leading to the killer’s arrest. Dozens of true-crime bloggers show up looking for both new evidence and “clicks,” and Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to review anything that might be a new lead.

When one of the bloggers locates the murder weapon, Lucas and Virgil begin to uncover vital details about the killer’s identity. But what they don’t know is the killer lurks in plain sight, and with the true-crime bloggers blasting every clue online, the killer can keep one step ahead. As the nation maneuvers the detectives closer to the truth, Lucas and Virgil will find that digging up Doris’s harrowing past might just get them buried instead.

I’ve been reading the Prey series mostly in order, but after a few of the earlier books, I’d taken a break to read the latest installment, Lethal Prey. At the time of starting Lethal Prey, I’d just finished Certain Prey so talk about some serious deja vu since both perpetrators were sociopathic lawyers although in Lethal Prey, Sandford really turned up the dial from a first time offender to a legitimate psycho serial killer.

Davenport is still a little shaken up after the events from Toxic Prey, with loved ones coming too close to danger; too close to losing them. Letty and Lucas are still recovering from the mental aftermath of that case, but it seems Lucas is finally getting back into it. In fact he’s getting literal headaches…”boredom headaches”. He’s been chasing assholes, but they’re generic assholes and if you know Lucas, he’s not one for lowlife generic [NPC energy] thugs. He wants that challenge, he wants, misses, craves that cat and mouse chase, the feeling of that HUNT.

So, his wish is answered. A cold case revived like gasoline on hellfire. A 20 year old case, in fact! 

The book starts off with the murder of Doris Grandfelt, a case that, while never having gone truly cold, had certainly gone cool. The first parts of the book gives the readers a glimpse back to the past and to how the case was originally handled with mentions of Davenport, Jenkins, and Shrake (boy do I miss these last two), before coming back to present day. After her own brush with death, Doris’ sister, Lara Grandfelt, realizes that her time is finite and she wishes to get to the bottom of the truth and to rain justice upon the killer. She’s willing to utilize true crime bloggers, podcasters, and whatever other methods can be helpful in this case. As for motivation? A $5 million reward, tax free for any piece of information that brings them to solving the case. 

But it isn’t so easy. There is no fresh DNA on scene, no sneaking into apartments/homes to gather evidence like a loose bullet in a shoe, witnesses that need to recount memories of personalities and people are from 2 decades ago, and just…so much to work on. 

Virgil Flowers is back and he’s…ready to never be back ever again. Unlike Lucas, who lives for the thrill of the hunt, Virgil is ready to call it quits. In fact, we see his annoyance at being pulled away from book writing and back into the case, time and time again in this book. Now that he has twins and is a three-time thriller novelist, he is ready to leave this life behind. Unlike Davenport, the guy who lives and breathes for these “hunts”, Virgil was never really for this job. In the earlier books, he’d been promised all the hard cases and that’s what he got, keeping him interested. But now, he’s ready to move on. Ready to write and damn it if he is going to be forced to work a case, does it have to be a 20 year old case with no leads to begin with?

Interestingly enough this was the first time a Sandford book ends on a semi-cliffhanger of sorts, at least for me. I haven’t read them all yet, but I’ve gone through all of Virgil Flowers’ books (~13 books) and roughly 13+ on the Lucas Davenport/Prey side. I’ve read one where a killer, captured at the end of one book returns as an antagonist after escaping and is out on the streets, killing again, in a subsequent book, but nothing like this where we know that this is not the end. Or at least, it felt that way. It is definitely unique and leaves a promising taste. Davenport is getting older and Virgil is more and more vocal about leaving this career behind. Sure I’m sad, but with an ending like that, I can hope for just one more to come. 

Like I mentioned before, I was catching up in the Prey series so I’m actually swimming in the many books of the earlier Davenport days. The days of pagers and Windows 98, the days where smartphones aren’t in use yet. I rather liked the incorporation of modern day references in the recent books like Covid or true crime podcasters. There was also a reference of cancel culture in the beginning when Lucas nudges Virgil, multiple times, to dial back on some of the shit he says that could royally mess him up. Coming from someone who has been reading all of the beginning books of this series [to catch up] where we still see payphones mentioned in the books, it’s refreshingly relatable. 

As scary as the sociopath of a lawyer, I just read, was in Certain Prey, the antagonist here is bone-chilling and I fear her more than dislike her. She flies into rages that are uncontrollable, seemingly blacking out during her killings. She would plan for a clean stabbing only to “wake up” realizing she’s covered in blood and the victim absolutely butchered. She has killed in her youth, and truly has no capabilities to feel remorse or guilt. Like someone mentioned in the book, she looked at some people like they were no more than a bug. She is 110% a puppy kicker and honestly probably a puppy killer too. She hated her husbands’ dogs.

This was less of bullets flying and more of a whodunit. It’s kind of understandable, Davenport is getting up there in age (his next big birthday in a few years would be 60 years old!), and the dynamic between Davenport and Virgil is always fun to read. They’re best buds for life and both are unorthodox in their methods of cracking cases. Deadly dangerous in clearance rates in their individual series, together? No clues are left behind. 

Yet still, they ran into enough trouble here that they had to actually lean on the immense capabilities of the true crime community. The level of “vulturism” displayed by the true crime people in this book was terrifying. I thought journalists were cold, brutal, and lacking in empathy. I follow a few true crime bloggers (ok…just one and it’s Rotten Mango) and compared to this book, Stephanie is an angel. The ones in the book were uh [very scary…so very scary!]. However! They could parse documents easily and follow scentless trails with no problem. And as annoyed as Davenport and Virgil were of them, they really became a help later down the road. 

[Extra mention, but I was SO happy to see Jenkins and Shrake mentioned there in the beginning and thought they’d be back for this case, but ah shucks they were just momentary mentions haha.]

Overall, a good book. Not my favorite Sandford book, but still was an enjoyable read where we know right off the bat who had done the crime, but it was up to our duo to collect the appropriate clues leading not just to the killer, but to gather enough good clues to hang them. Sandford has always been my favorite, will always be my favorite author, and is also my comfort author because he’s got a way with keeping his books in the same relative format without ever making it feel reused and recycled. It’s this familiar structure, with an always reliable foundation, that I can count on; the characters, the detail and care that goes into the villain’s character, the protagonists’ bickering and friendly banter, the way crimes are solved, the general atmosphere, the climax and reveals, the endings (though this ending is a bit new).

I don’t know how many more books there will be left of these two together, but I look forward to what comes next!