Stolen Prey - John Sandford

A whole family were tortured and murdered by Mexican drug gang. BCA cop Lucas Davenport was at first called to handle the media, but his boss expected him to catch the murderers. A federal police was sent from Mexico to help, since he was familiar with the drug gang.

The Mexican gang had been laundering money via Polaris National Bank in Minneapolis and one of the bank employees saw the opportunity to steal the month’s flow of money. Another BCA cop, Shaffer, worked on the murders’ angle and Lucas worked parallelly until the Polaris president asked him to investigate from the money’s angle. Who had stolen the money and where it had gone?

Stolen Prey was another great book in the Prey series. The tortures made everybody scared by only hearing the name ‘The Mexicans’. In America, tortures on children and dogs are intolerable. It’s odd how they sometimes value animals more than people.We also see how Shaffer developed from a very straight cop to a slightly flexible one, how Lucas corrupted him.

Lucas to Shaffer: “Tell the reporters a strategic lie”

Shaffer (after thought about it): “It feels unethical. But I won’t give you up, if you tell it.”

In the beginning of the book, Lucas was robbed after drawing money from an ATM machine while doing his night jogging. He sprained his wrist and had to wear a fiberglass cast throughout the book. He determined to catch the two amateur robbers, but since he was busy working on the Mexicans, he delegated the case to Virgil Flowers, his subordinate.

A cop like Lucas had many enemies and again in this book, the bad guys came for his family. He could not always be around to protect them. It was not like in the old days, when he was single; now he had a family and he had a responsibility. He was lucky to have a daughter like Letty. He said to her in Wicked Prey: “You take care of your family and you take care of your friends.”