Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Summary and Reviews of Easy Prey by John Sandford

Easy Prey by John Sandford

Easy Prey

by John Sandford
  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2000, 384 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2001, 400 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

John Sandford's Lucas Davenport novels grow deeper, richer, more suspenseful, and their audience grows even larger. The best, however, is yet to come....

With each new book, John Sandford's Lucas Davenport novels grow deeper, richer, more suspenseful, and their audience grows even larger. The best, however, is yet to come.

When Davenport is called to the white-stuccoed house, after the party, he knows it's for no usual case. For one thing, the strangulation victim is Alie'e Maison, she of the knife-edge cheekbones and jade-green eyes: as models go, one of the biggest. For another, there are a few small complications. Such as the drugs in her body and the evidence that she had recently made love to a woman. Such as the fact that one of Lucas's own men had been at the party, and is now a suspect. Such as the little surprise they are all about to find when they search the house: a second body, stuffed in a closet, with a deep dent in its skull.

The whole case is going to be like this, Lucas knows--secrets piled upon secrets, the ground shifting constantly under his feet. But even he cannot suspect the earth tremors he is about to feel, when an old lover comes back into his life, a married woman now...whose own secrets may turn out to be the most dangerous ones of all.

Filled with brilliant characters and exceptional drama, this is Sandford's most suspenseful novel yet.

When the first man woke up that morning, he wasn't thinking about killing anyone. He woke up with a head full of blues, a brain that was too big for his skull, and a bladder about to burst. He lay with his eyes closed, breathing across a tongue that tasted like burnt chicken feathers. The blues rolled in through the bedroom door.

Coming down hard.

He had been flying on cocaine for three days, getting everything done, everything. Then last night, coming down, he'd stopped at a liquor store for a bottle of Stolichnaya. His bleeding brain retained a picture of himself lifting the bottle off the shelf, and another picture of an argument with the counterman, who didn't want to break a hundred-dollar bill.

By that time, the coke high had become unsustainable; and the Stoli had been a bad idea. There was no smooth landing after a three-day toot, but the vodka turned a wheels-up belly landing into a full crash-and-burn. Now he'd pay. If you peeled open his skull and...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $0 for 0 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

Library Journal
Not only a suspenseful tale revolving around the art world, the high-fashion scene, and the realm of a large metropolitan police department attempting to protect its citizens , but ... a truly engrossing mystery that leaves the reader guessing to the end.

Publisher's Weekly
As always, it's a joy to follow this rare cop who gets led more often by his gut instinct than by clues. His humor, understated and perverse, can be wildly funny, and the people he runs across are shrewdly conceived originals, cut from fabric way at the back of the bin.

Reader Reviews

Anonymous
Brooklyn
I generally found the story to be a compelling one and at times found it difficult to put the book down.
The storyline is intriguing and all the necessary elements seem
to be present, but the first person narrative is difficult
to digest in ...   Read More
Anonymous
ViagraCat
Sandford is among the best at police procedural mysteries, but he tries too hard in this one. A couple of people get murdered at a drug-infested glam party and during the investigation by the ever-dogged Lucas Davenport, more questions than...   Read More

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $0 for 0 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Easy Prey, try these:

We have 4 read-alikes for Easy Prey, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by John Sandford
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $0 for 0 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Based on the author’s family story, comes an extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ escape from Taiwan.
  • Book Jacket
    The Lilac People
    by Milo Todd
    For fans of All the Light We Cannot See, a poignant tale of a trans man’s survival in Nazi Germany and postwar Berlin.
  • Book Jacket
    Lessons in Chemistry
    by Bonnie Garmus
    Praised by Parade and The New York Times Book Review, this debut features a 1960s scientist turned TV cooking star.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Original Daughter
    by Jemimah Wei

    A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

  • Book Jacket

    Ginseng Roots
    by Craig Thompson

    A new graphic memoir from the author of Blankets and Habibi about class, childhood labor, and Wisconsin’s ginseng industry.

  • Book Jacket

    Serial Killer Games
    by Kate Posey

    A morbidly funny and emotionally resonant novel about the ways life—and love—can sneak up on us (no matter how much pepper spray we carry).

Who Said...

Life is the garment we continually alter, but which never seems to fit.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B W M in H M

and be entered to win..