MASKED PREY

5 stars out of 5

If I've missed any of the books in this series, it

was very early on; but once hooked at whatever the first one was years ago, I've tackled every single one since. Some have tickled my fancy a little more than others, but never once have I been disappointed. And this one's no exception.

Lucas Davenport, now 52 and still recovering in his home state of Minneapolis from a serious gunshot wound from an earlier book, gets an unwanted call to come to Washington, D.C. The FBI discovered a website buried within a teenage girl's popular blogs called 1919, and it's plastered with photos of children of influential members of Congress. A couple of Senators want Lucas to investigate who prefer that the whole thing be kept under wraps. But the FBI gets wind of it and, thinking the site may be connected to mostly undercover Alt-right groups who don't play by established rules, the FBI is intent on protecting those kids, agree to work with Lucas, who's from the U.S. Marshall's Service. Lucas, in turn, calls in friends Bob Matees and Rae Givens, who tend to enjoy working a bit outside the lines if necessary.

Early on, they hope to find out who's behind the website before word gets out and someone (or several someones) from those anti-government groups decides to do as the site seems to suggest - kidnap or murder one or more of the children just to make a political statement and get the parents' attention. But as luck (and the media) would have it, secrets like this die rather easily. Suddenly, it becomes even more urgent for Lucas, his buddies and all the FBI and local law enforcement teams to solve the case. The need to hustle increases even more with the assistant to the leader of one of the groups is murdered.

Much of the investigation involves in-person discussions with members of the Alt-right groups scattered thither and yon; they are numerous, and most of the discussions lead to dead ends. That, and the sheer number of characters, makes this book a little more tedious to read, perhaps, but it's hard to complain because everything is interspersed with the humor is one of the reasons this series is so appealing to me, to-wit: As he's getting on an airplane, Lucas - who is terrified of flying - is forced to sit by a woman "...who'd already begun knitting something in a color of green so dreadful that Lucas didn't want to sit next to it..."

Gotta love it. You need to read it. I need to thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for allowing me to savor a pre-publication review copy.

Masked Prey by John Sandford (Penguin Group LLC, April 2020); 416 pp.