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A thriller that will make your hair stand on end. The stakes are high, the characters rich, the action relentless... the story will clamp down like a bear trap on all who open its covers.Publishers Weekly
SUDDEN PREY
Lucas Davenport knows why people kill. Some do it for thrills. Some do it for profit. But when Davenports team guns down two bank robbers in the middle of a heist, he falls prey to the purest, simplest criminal motivation: revenge.
Youll probably read it in one big gulp.
Chicago Tribune
Davenport... is an intelligent, mesmerizing hero.
Orlando Sentinel
A wonderful novel peopled with unforgettable characters. The tension never stops.
The Orange County Register
Fans of previous Sandford novels will be thrilled.
Booklist
Sudden Prey delivers! Omaha World-Herald
Praise for John Sandfords Prey novels
Relentlessly swift... genuinely suspenseful... excellent.
Los Angeles Times
Sandford is a writer in control of his craft.
Chicago Sun-Times
Excellent... compelling... everything works.
USA Today
Grip-you-by-the-throat thrills... a hell of a ride.
Houston Chronicle
Crackling, page-turning tension... great scary fun.
New York Daily News
One of the most engaging characters in contemporary fiction. The Detroit News
Positively chilling. St. Petersburg Times
Just right for fans of The Silence of the Lambs.
Booklist
One of the most horrible villains this side of Hannibal.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Ice-pick chills... excruciatingly tense... a double-pumped roundhouse of a thriller. Kirkus Reviews
TITLES BY JOHN SANDFORD
Dead Watch
Dark of the Moon
Rules of Prey
Shadow Prey
Eyes of Prey
Silent Prey
Winter Prey
Night Prey
Mind Prey
Sudden Prey
Secret Prey
Certain Prey
Easy Prey
Chosen Prey
Mortal Prey
Naked Prey
Hidden Prey
Broken Prey
Invisible Prey
Phantom Prey
The Night Crew
THE KIDD NOVELS
The Empress File
The Fools Run
The Devils Code
The Hanged Mans Song
THROUGH THE SPEAKERS above his head, little children sang in sweet voices, O holy night, the stars are brightly shining, it is the night of the dear Saviors birth...
The man who might kill Candy LaChaise stood in the cold and watched her through the glass doors. Sometimes he could see only the top of her head, and sometimes not even that, but he never lost track of her.
Candy, unaware, browsed through the lingerie, moving slowly from rack to rack. She wasnt really interested in underwear: her attention was fixed on the back of the store, the appliance department. She stopped, pulled out a black bustier, held it up, cocked her head like women do. Put it back, turned toward the doors.
The man who might kill her stepped back, out of sight.
A minivan pulled to the curb and a chunky woman in an orange parka hopped out and pushed back the vans side door. An avalanche of dumplinglike children spilled onto the sidewalk. They were of both sexes, all blond, and of annual sizes: maybe four, five, six, seven, eight and nine years old. The van headed for a parking space, while the woman herded the kids toward the doors.
The man took a bottle from his pocket, stuck his tongue into the neck, tipped it up and faked a swallow or two. The woman hustled the kids past him, shielding them with her body, into the store and out of sight. That was what he wanted; he put the bottle away, and looked back through the doors.
THERE SHE WAS , still in lingerie. He looked around, and cursed the season: the Christmas decorations, the dirty piles of hard, frozen snow along the streets, the wind that cut through his woolen gloves. His face was thin, unshaven, the skin stretched like parchment on a tambourine. Nicotine had stained his teeth as yellow as old ivory. He lit a Camel, and when he put the cigarette to his lips, his hands trembled with the cold. When he exhaled, the wind snatched away the smoke and the steam of his breath, and made him feel even colder than he was.
AN OILY BARITONE, a man whod never be Bing Crosby:... Let nothing you dismaaay, Remember Christ our Sa-ay-vior was born on Christmas Day...
He thought, Christ, if I could only stop the music...
From where he stood, he could see the golden spire atop the state capitol; under the December overcast it looked like a bad piece of brass. Fucking Minnesota. He put the bottle to his lips, and this time let a little of the wine trickle down his throat. The harsh grape-juice taste cut into his tongue, but there was no warmth in the alcohol.
What in the hell was she doing?
Shed cruised Sears Brand Central, taking her time, looking at refrigerators, buying nothing. Then she strolled through the ladieswear department, where shed looked at blouses. Then she walked back through Brand Central, checking the cellular telephones.
Again she walked away: hed been inside at the time, and shed almost trapped him in the television display. He hit the doors, went through, outside into the wind... but shed swerved toward the lingerie. Had she spotted him? A TV salesman had. Picking up his ragged coat and rotten shoes, the salesman had posted himself near the Toshiba wide-screens, and was watching him like a hawk. Maybe she...
There. She was on her way out.
When Candy walked out of Sears, he didnt look at her. He saw her, but he didnt move his head. He simply stood against the outside wall, rocked on his heels, mumbled into his parka and took another nip of the MD 20-20.
CANDY NEVER REALLY saw him, not then. She half-turned in his direction as she left the store, but her eyes skipped over him, like they might skip over a trash barrel or a fire hydrant. She bopped down the parking lot, not quite in a hurry, but not dawdling, either. Her step was light, athletic, confident, the step of a cheerful woman. She was pretty, in a thirty-something high-school cheerleader way, with natural blond hair, a round Wisconsin face and a clear Wisconsin complexion.
She walked halfway down the lot before she spotted the Chevy van and started toward it.
The man who might kill her, who still stood by the doors, said, She just walked past her car.
A Republican state legislator in a wool Brooks Brothers overcoat heard the words and hurried into the store. No time for dialogue with a street schizo: you see them everywhere, mumbling into their wine-stained parkas.
I think shes going for that van, dude.
CANDY LIKED COUNTRY music and shirt pockets that had arrows at the corners. She liked line-dancing and drinking Grain Belt. She liked roadhouses on country blacktop, pickup trucks and cowboy boots and small blue-eyed children and guns. When she got to the Chevy van, she took out a two-inch key ring filled with keys and began running them through the lock. She hit it on the twelfth one, and popped the door.
