Abandoned by Booklikes

Wow. This book rocked it from beginning to end. Great character development for some of the characters I have been reading about for 16 books. I also really loved the idea of Lucas being home alone while dealing with Weather, the kids, and the housekeeper being in London for the summer. It definitely shows us a changed Lucas. I was worried here and there we would see some terrible backsliding with regards to Lucas being happily married, but Sandford doesn't go there. I was also really happy with the overall story being about Lucas and company realizing they are dealing with a serial killer. The why behind the killings is astounding though and the final reveals blew me away, I didn't see any of the events coming. I also loved that Sandford did a bait and switch in this one too. 

"Broken Prey" has Lucas still assisting Sloan with a particularly gruesome murder. A young woman is found hung and disemboweled. When another murder is found with a father and son, all clues point to one man being behind this. Lucas, Sloan, and the rest of the police forces are racing to find the killer before they strike again. Through a roundabout way we have Lucas and Sloan starting to poke into the ins and outs of a mental institution as well. Lucas's long-time friend Elle assists on this one as a profiler, and I found her insights very good. 

We have Lucas dealing with the family being gone and him realizing he was reveling in being messy, before he got tired of it. Weather also got him an IPOD as a gift along with money towards him buying songs (Oh IPODs...) and is trying to carve out a list of top 100 songs. The ins and outs of Lucas going through artists and why they suck along with the other cops and Sloane was hilarious. There is a weird callback to this list at the end of the story and Sandford even lists his top 100 songs too. 

We also have Lucas touching upon the depression that came on before that he had in prior books. Am glad that Sandford touches upon depression and via a character even says that taking drugs to help you through it, isn't a bad thing. We have hints that Sloan is going through a depression because he can't take seeing any more dead bodies and tracking down the men and women who do this to other people. 

I loved the development of Sloan in this one. He really is a brilliant investigator, and his dreams of opening a bar seemed like a pipe dream at times.

We per usual get into a POV of the bad guy...and that's all I am going to say about it. Sandford delivers a wonderful surprise I didn't see coming and I hope the next book matches this with just letting things unravel for both us and Lucas at the same time.

The writing was top-notch and at times quite poetic. Sandford provides more context and history with different locations around Minneapolis. The flow was really good too and I was just in shock and horror at the end of the book because you don't know how things are going to turn out. I read as fast as I could and felt like the words needed to be even faster. 

The ending was really good and I have to say also sad in a way. We are left with some questions about things and some very good CYA maneuvers in the end.