REVIEWED BY RAY O’LEARY:

   

JOHN SANDFORD – Shadow Prey. Lucas Davenport #2. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1990. Berkley, paperback, 1991.

   Over 20 years ago, Larry Clay was a policeman who used his uniform to get away with raping 12-year-old Native American girls. Now, Lawrence Duberville Clay is Director of the FBI — and a small group of Native Americans have devised a plan to lure him to Minnesota, where they plan to kill him.

   Realizing Clay is a Publicity Hound, the group plans to draw his attention with a series of well-publicized murders. But since the killings began in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where most of the Indians live, the bulk of the investigation is handled by Lt. Lucas Davenport of the Minneapolls PD.

   I found this inordinately easy to put down. Davenport is hardly a likeable character — he has proposed marriage to the unwed mother of his child, a Murphy Brown clone, but has no qualms about starting an affair with the female cop sent to assist him — and the ending is swiped from an earlier — and better — book by William Goldman.

— Reprinted from A Shropshire Sleuth #71, May 1995.