Review: Neon Prey

Neon Prey by John Sandford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. And if what happens is that you get eaten by a cannibal while there you'll definitely be staying in Vegas.

Clayton Deese was an enforcer/hired killer for a loan shark in New Orleans who gets arrested after one of his jobs go wrong. Since Deese has a lot of skeletons in his closet he jumps bail and disappears. Actually, the skeletons are in graves behind his house, and Deese had a habit of cutting prime cuts off his victims and throwing them on the grill. Once that grisly discovery has been made Deese is the country’s most notorious fugitive, and US Marshal Lucas Davenport is brought in to help track him down.

Deese has hooked up with his brother who is running a nasty home invasion crew that Lucas tracks from Los Angeles to Las Vegas as the trail keeps getting bloodier. There’s also a complication that Deese’s old boss is worried that he’ll flip on him if caught so he’s trying to either kill him or make sure he gets out of the country.

This is the 29th book of the Prey series, and it’s got all the usual stuff. The plotting is tight with multiple characters all working their own agendas, the tension builds nicely to some big moments, and we get to hang out with Davenport as he uses a mix of deduction, manipulation, and intimidation to find the bad guys. Sandford even throws a pretty wicked curve ball at the reader about a quarter of the way into the book that literally made me sit up and curse aloud in shock when it happened. Lucas’ new role as a marshal continues to be interesting, and the Vegas setting is used well as the kind of place where trying to follow a suspect through the maze of a casino is a challenge.

However, it doesn’t quite hit the peaks of the series at its best. There’s some great set-up of Deese as a people-eatin’ leg-breaker, but more time is actually spent with other members of the home invasion crew so that he doesn’t come across as the best of the Prey bad guys. It’s a little disappointing that more isn’t done with the cannibal angle. (What? If I read a book where I’m told the villain eats people then I expect somebody to get eaten. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the only person who watched Hannibal.) In fact, it’s more used for shock factor and almost a running gag than anything. The twist that we get early on doesn’t really amount to much either at the end of the day and is kind of quickly forgotten.

Still, it’s John Sandford so it’s a pretty satisfying thriller that will keep you turning pages even if it isn’t Lucas’s most memorable case.

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