{"id":9998,"date":"2011-09-18T13:37:52","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T18:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=9998"},"modified":"2011-09-18T13:37:52","modified_gmt":"2011-09-18T18:37:52","slug":"book-report-silent-prey-by-john-sandford-1992","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/18\/book-report-silent-prey-by-john-sandford-1992\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>Silent Prey<\/i> by John Sandford (1992)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/silentprey.jpg\" width=\"100\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"4\">It&#8217;s strange; I&#8217;ve borrowed a number of the later parts to this series from the library, and this is an ex-library volume that I own, so I kinda felt like I had to be extra careful with it when I read it.  Even though, as an ex-library copy, it&#8217;s obvious that other people have not been as scrupulous as I.  I passed this book a number of times on my shelves, each time a little surprised that I owned one of Sandford&#8217;s books that I had yet to read.  Finally, the time was right, and I happened to spot it sometime other than I was 300 pages into a 600 page science fiction or high fantasy epic.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an early volume from the series; number four, I think.  Davenport has not yet become the political fixer cop he does later, although he does get a glimpse of that lifestyle as he travels to New York to try to hunt a serial killer whom he&#8217;d already captured in Minneapolis but who escaped custody.  The killer is strung out on drugs and&#8211;wait for it&#8211;does gruesome things.  Seriously.  Although he just dumps the bodies and does not pose them ritually, which differentiates him from some of Sandford&#8217;s other villains.<\/p>\n<p>As Davenport purportedly is supposed to draw press attention from the actual cops hunting the serial killer, he&#8217;s also commissioned as an outsider by a secret intelligence project to find a group of vigilante cops who might be vigilanteing.  So there&#8217;s another thread here with lots of intrigue.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an okay book, but Sandford does a very, very naughty thing: he withholds a very pertinent bit of information so he can spring it on us as a surprise.  The bad guy is crossdressing to get his victims.  So we get him all out and about and whatnot, and this pertinent bit is not revealed until an interview with a jailhouse neighbor transvestite reveals that the villain learned how to do it right from him.  Then, suddenly, we get passages of the villain dolling himself up and mentions that he&#8217;s walking in heels, and so on.  I mean, he&#8217;s hiding out as live-in help for an elderly woman by wearing drag at all hours, and this is not mentioned until two-thirds of the way through the book.  Oh, for Pete&#8217;s sake.<\/p>\n<p><center><b>Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=stlbrianj-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0425224465&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=FFFFFF&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s strange; I&#8217;ve borrowed a number of the later parts to this series from the library, and this is an ex-library volume that I own, so I kinda felt like I had to be extra careful with it when I read it. Even though, as an ex-library copy, it&#8217;s obvious that other people have not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9998"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10001,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9998\/revisions\/10001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}