Rules Of Prey

BLUF: I didn't find the main character appealing.

I feel guilty writing reviews of books that were written in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. It was a whole different world back then. I would love to get into some of these popular author's books, but they seem to be mostly in series from this time and I just don't know where to start.

Rules of Prey follows “maddog”, a serial rapist/murderer who is obsessive about leaving no traces at his crime scenes with the exception to his own notes – each of which lists a rule that he keeps in order to ensure he doesn't get caught. Lucas Davenport, a playboy detective, will do anything to catch this killer – including feeding lies to the media, setting up unsuspecting victims, and withholding information from his station.

Rules of Prey introduces us to the murderer from the beginning. There isn't any mystery in who he is or his motives, but rather, when the police will uncover these truths. He's described as highly intelligent, but never shows this trait. Rather he is a player who enjoys the game he creates between him and the police.

Another individual described as intelligent is Lucas Davenport. I'm not buying it. I know it's indicative of the times, but I just can't respect a man who uses women as if they aren't worth anything ESPECIALLY a man who chooses to act this way after finding out one of the women, who he actually likes as a person, is pregnant. Talk about chauvinistic.. but hey, he only sleeps with smart women – maybe he hopes they'll rub off on him.

“You know enough of [the women that I have dated] to see the pattern,” he said. “I don't go out with dummies.”

Pros

A quick and easy read, good pacing with a decent story. The writing flows smoothly without much friction.

Cons

Weak characters, Davenport might have been a very likable guy in 1980s but he's not a very appealing hero, he's also pretty weird with women. The three women in the story are bland and uni-dimensional. I felt there were too many red herrings, some angle that's developed only for it to go nowhere by the next chapter.

This is the first book of the series, so I hope the later ones get better.

3.5 stars.

I liked it, but the audio narration was kind of jarring. I do plan on continuing with the series though.

I struggled to get into this one. Some of the descriptions and imagery were a bit much. It definitely improved in the second half, but the ending left me underwhelmed.

Quintessential 90s police procedural, with all the racism, misogynism, and homophobia certain people swear was okay back then, because they were “different times”.

What I appreciate in this is that Sandford doesn't try to sand off the edges, Davenport is not the “one good cop”, he's probably the worst of them. It's fashionable to say that these days you couldn't publish a book like this, but the whole Davenport series was re-released starting in 2018, so it's obviously not true. But you definitely need to put away the modern sensibilities to read it.

Insight into a cop's wet dream. Bang some babes at 7 o'clock, pursue a psycho murderer at 9.

The plot was enough to keep me interested, but the characters were all pretty underdeveloped to the point where I forgot which babe's house Lucas was at halfway through a chapter. The Maddog murderer started off strong but kind of felt too lucky and less cunning as the story went on. There was too much time spent on making Lucas look like a super cool, sexy, aloof badass, that the actual crime solving felt underwhelming.

The overall resolution felt too easy and unjustified for it to feel satisfying.

Lucas Davenport is an utterly charmless and mostly amoral character. Hard to see the appeal of this series.

This book was better than I expected. I´ve had it for a really long time so I´m glad I finally got around to reading it. I will definitely be reading more of this series.

It has been over 20 years since I first read this book and started the wonderful journey through John Sandford's prey novels. These are among my most favorite books and after the last few books I kept thinking, I should re-read this series. So that's what I'm doing. One down, twenty-five to go.

I love the way that Sandford has Davenport thinking. Even though he's fishing he's plotting out what he's going to do to trap this guy. Sometimes it works, and sometimes shit hits the fan, but it's always entertaining. I sit there sometimes and try to figure out if and how he's going to get away with stuff he pulls. It's fantastic.

I love that it's been so long that I've forgotten the details enough that the book is still fun to read. There are still surprises and at the same time there's the familiarity with the characters. I did get a little sad when certain characters who met their demise later in the series showed up, but like greeting old friends, it's nice to see everyone.

This is certainly a great introduction to Lucas. It has all the things about him that I love about him and I remember why I love this series and kept reading it for twenty years!

Too scary for me. I should've known from the first pages, but really, it was the Stephen King endorsement that drove me away.