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Audiobook10 hours
Certain Prey
Written by John Sandford
Narrated by Richard Ferrone
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Clara Rinker is twenty-eight, beautiful, charmingly southern-and the best hit woman in the business. She just goes about her business, collects her money, and goes home. Her latest hit sounds simple: a defense attorney wants a rival eliminated. No problem-until a witness survives. Clara usually knows how to deal with loose ends: cut them off, one by one, until they're all gone. This time, there's one loose end that's hard to shake.
Lucas Davenport has no idea of the toll this case is about to take on him. Clara knows his weak spots. She knows how to penetrate them, and how to use them. And when a woman like Clara has the advantage, no one is safe.
Lucas Davenport has no idea of the toll this case is about to take on him. Clara knows his weak spots. She knows how to penetrate them, and how to use them. And when a woman like Clara has the advantage, no one is safe.
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Author
John Sandford
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of thirty-three Prey novels, two Letty Davenport novels, four Kidd novels, twelve Virgil Flowers novels, three YA novels co-authored with his wife, Michele Cook, and five stand-alone books.
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Reviews for Certain Prey
Rating: 4.012820615384615 out of 5 stars
4/5
429 ratings13 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Carmel Loan was a young, beautiful, intelligent and ambitious attorney when she began an affair with co-worker Hale Allen. She begins pressuring him to leave his wife Barbara but Hale is only in it for the adventure not the long haul. So what if he's married? Professor killer Clara Rinker can be hired to solve that little problem. Clara thinks one day job, easy money - but things start to go wrong from the start. Another excellent Davanport mystery.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Probably the biggest disappointment in a Sandford book I have ever read. I realize Sandford is a formula writer - and is sucking up to a certain audience. Nevertheless, he is a great writer and handles dialogue about as well as any one. BUT - Certain Prey not only hits a new low in terms of language and sexual descriptions - but the plot was absolutely ridiculous. Is this what his fans really crave? A stripper-contract killer-whore and a highly regarded lawyer-whore partnering up in an out-of-control killing spree? C'mon, Sandford!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The first of two Clara Rinker books. Super fast read. All interesting and worthwhile characters. Fun read with some horrific murders!!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 10th Lucas Davenport novel is one of his most popular because, I believe, it is a study of opposites and contrasts. Davenport crosses more than a few lines in pursuit of a murderer and professional killer she’s hired. Meanwhile the assassin is an extremely sympathetic character. When a complication arises that may trace back to the hired killer, the instigator arranges a meeting and is surprised that the killer is a woman. As each complication is removed, another grows; and the developing friendship between the women is yet another contrast. The thriller aspect becomes almost secondary as the book races to its conclusion.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I grabbed this particular book off the leasing shelf on a whim, began it in the station waiting for the train and could not put it down. Apparently, Sandford writes a series of novels that would be difficult to classify as either mysteries or thrillers. They all have the word “prey” in the title, and Lucas Davenport as protagonist. In this latest work, Davenport is a deputy chief of the Minneapolis Police Department.
Clara Rinker is a hitwoman. Raped after working one evening as a stripper at a nudie bar, she arranges with her bosses to have the man who raped her brought back to the bar so she can his hands. Deciding that wasn’t enough, she kills him, and the bar owners, impressed by her passion and lack of remorse, enlist her as a part-time hitperson for the St. Louis mob. She’s also very smart, but lonely, a fact that leads to some difficulties when she is hired by Carmel Loan, a successful lawyer in Minneapolis, to kill the wife of the man Carmel has the lust for. The killing succeeds but everything gets really complicated when she also has to shoot a policeman surreptitiously on his way for a hamburger. The cop is not killed and the complication arises that he might be able to identify her. Then Carmel learns that the love of her life has been having an affair with a secretary, and to make things worse, the drug dealer she hired to put her in contact with the hitman — notice how I’ve cleverly used all the appropriate endings to satisfy everyone – has sent a blackmail note revealing he kept a videotape of their conversation that recorded Loan requesting the hit. The denouement is quite satisfying. Lucas is an interesting character, albeit not as well developed perhaps as one would like, perhaps because he has been explained more in previous novels. He makes some very funny comments about a six-hundred-page report he has to read entitled “The Mayor’s Select Commission on Cultural Diversity, Alternative Lifestyles, and Other Ableness in the Minneapolis Police Department: A Preliminary Approach to Divergent Modalities” [Executive Summary] — otherwise known as the Perfection Report, or The Wellness Thing, or the Wholeness Report or the Otherness Report. It’s a very thick report that literally saves Lucas’s bacon — well, maybe not his bacon. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A somewhat likeable assassin and a very unlikeable lawyer present Minneapolis deputy police chief Lucas Davenport with an tough challenge. Clara Rinker is a pretty, athletic, highly skilled assassin. Carmel Loan is a highly polished, highly talented, highly priced criminal defense attorney. Barbara Allen is a somewhat stout, very wealthy woman with the misfortune of possessing something Carmel wants - her husband. Highly entertaining.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is my first book by John Sandford and I loved it. I decided to read it because I saw that a movie was coming out on USA and I wanted to read it before I watched the movie. I just hope the movie is just as good as the book.Lucas Davenport is a detective in Minnesota and is after a murderer. You follow Detective Davenport as he tries to unravel not just one murder but 3 murders that look like they were committed by a professional. Lucas also has it in for a lawyer, Carmel Loan. The twists and turns that this story takes kept me reading until my eyes were closing due to lack of sleep.Need a little excitement in your reading than I suggest you give Certain Prey a try.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I have a rule of thumb for watching television - no doctors, no lawyers, no cops. It's different with books. I was given a copy of "Certain Prey," and decided to give it a shot. There's a lot to like in this book - the protagonist, Lucas Davenport, is a well-regarded cop. Attractive, but not too attractive; smart, but not too smart; determined, but willing to take time off to go fishing. There's a streak of independence that befits his status as a deputy chief, but he's not a Dirty Harry flouter of the rules. You can't help but like Davenport and his fellow cops. I also liked the assassin, Clara Rinker, he and the FBI are chasing. She's not a stock character - for one thing, she's a woman. On one hand, she's reacting to a traumatic past; on the other, she's a shrewd businesswoman, doing very well what she does best. The plot revolves around Rinker being hired to kill the wife of Minneapolis attorney Hale Allen. Why? Seems the woman who hired Rinker, high-powered Minneapolis attorney Carmen Loan, is fatally infatuated with Allen and hopes, with his wife out of the way, to become the second Mrs. Allen. The character of Carmen Loan is clearly the weakest element of the book - a highly intelligent, successful, ruthless nutjob in the mode of "Fatal Attraction"'s Alex Forrest. She has better taste in clothes than in men, attracted to Allen for the shallowest reasons and willing to engage in many more murders to cover her tracks. By contrast, Clara Rinker, while generally dispassionate about her job (though she will not murder a child witness), is generally clear-headed and highly professional. Her loneliness as a free-lance executioner with mob ties, causes her to bond with Carmen as a BFF, and that throws a serious kink into her business model. This book really is a procedural - how and why do Rinker and Loan plan their murders and subsequent actions to deflect the police and FBI away from them; and do how the cops, led by Davenport, track them down. In the end, Carmen follows her lunatic plans right down the line; Clara Rinker, not so much, and that's another good thing about "Certain Prey." I wonder whether the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce has a love/hate relationship with John Sandford. He brings attention to the city and shines a glowing light on its law enforcement professionals. He also avoids the "Fargo" cliches about Minnesotans (yes, I loved the movie). But he also amps up the murder rate in Minneapolis beyond what would seem believable. If you can suspend reality on that, and if you can swallow Carmen Loan as a character, this is a book to enjoy. I did.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moves quickly, and fun until the end - which retreats into cliche a bit.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oh well, that didn’t last long, but I think Marcy and Lucas are far from over. What an interesting story line this time around, but there was not much mention of his daughter. I hope Sandford doesn’t pull the old soap opera trick and have her appear in the next book as a seventeen year old. Again, this had a great flow to it and a rocking ending. We know Rinker will be back someday. She won't be able to resist.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As usual an action packed look into the world of Lucas Davenport.Murders abound thanks to hitwoman Clara Rinker,who has proven to be Lucas' one that got away.A semi-cliffhanger ending but I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of Miss Rinker.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I bought 4 Prey books and read them in order, but they weren't directly following each other. This one is book 10 in the series. It's the one with the lawyer who hires someone to kill her beloved's wife, so they can get together. She finds the eminently professional Clara Rinken who does everything right. But when Carmel is blackmailed by her contact, she recontacts Clara and from there things get sticky...Lucas is up to his old tricks and plays his usual mind games. I liked this one. Clara is a terrific character, so good in fact, that Sandford uses her again in a later book...
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As a teenager, Clara Rinker ran away from home and an abusive stepfather. While working as a dancer in a strip club, Clara is raped but plots her vengeance and kills the man who assaulted her. This begins a long career for Clara as a hired killer. Carmel Loan is a successful defense attorney in Minneapolis, a woman who is used to getting what she wants. And she wants Hale Allen, but standing in her way is Allen’s wife. Through a third-party, Carmel hires Clara to kill Allen’s wife, at which point, Lucas Davenport steps into the picture. Before Clara can enjoy her new relationship with Allen, the liaison she used to contact Clara tries to blackmail Carmel, so Carmel hires Clara personally to take care of this matter. From this point, things begin to unravel, which requires Clara and Carmel to team up and commit more murders. All the while, Davenport and his crew are one step behind the two killers, with no evidence to tie either one to any of the murders.This is the tenth book in the Prey series by John Sandford, which remains as fresh at this point as at the beginning. Lucas Davenport is an engaging character, an intelligent and intense investigator who enjoys his career chasing killers. Although there is no actual mystery to figure out here, which marks this as more of a thriller, the chase by Davenport and several strong secondary characters is fine-tuned and all the more enjoyable to follow.