In Chosen Prey, The police chief, Lucas Davenport, hunts a serial killer named James Qatar. I'm not including any spoilers in this review, so I'm not going to get into a lot of detail about killings other than to say Sandford establishes very early in the book that Qatar is the killer. It's up to Davenport and his team of investigators to find him before he kills again.
Overall I enjoyed Chosen Prey very much. It was a page turner, and although I knew who the killer was, I was on the edge of my seat while reading/listening to the audio book version of the novel. Sandford does a good job of creating realistic characters and building tension from scene to scene and chapter to chapter. I even found myself identifying with Qatar at times. It's a rare quality to identify with a serial killer when I read. I think that's why I was so drawn in. I almost didn't want him to be caught.
I give this book three and a half stars. *** 1/2. There were more aspects I liked than didn't like, but a few things about Chosen Prey really bothered me too. One of those things wasn't within Sandford's control. The audio book version I used had an author interview at the end lasting nearly 40 minutes. When Chosen Prey ended, I was expecting another 40 minutes of story. Had I read the book version this wouldn't have been a problem. As it was, however, I felt cheated that the novel ended when it did. I kept waiting for one more plot twist, and suddenly the whole thing was over.
Marshall, Davenport, Lucas, and Qatar were finely crafted characters. Dell, Marcey, and Weather were harder for me to get to know. Their personalities and actions were important to the plot, but I didn't feel like I related with any of them. I think part of this was because Weather's last name was used. I wasn't sure if Dell was the investigator's first or last name. Marcey felt like a secretary to me rather than a cop. Her role worked with the plot, but I felt like a whole can of worms was opened that wasn't able to be resolved. I wanted to know if she went back to more in depth police work.
Perhaps part of my problem was choosing the 13th book in the series rather than book number one. Overall I was still able to enjoy the novel on its own merits without having to have read the preceding 12 novels, but my favorite kind of series as a reader is one in which I can pluck a book out of the middle and not have a lot of loose strings.
My other issue was that Qatar's bag of bloody clothes isn't really tidied up. Lucas Davenport spends a lot of time looking for it, and the bag with the clothes isn't really a closed issue at the end of Chosen Prey.
I did manage to listen to 13 hours of audio in 3 days, so I was pretty sucked into the plot. I would have given this one 4 stars if the bloody clothes would have been better addressed. Maybe I just need to read book 14?
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