Government drone by day and book lover and geek girl by night!
Ehhh. I didn't really like this one. It's a strong 3 star book, but the whole thing with the character of Fairy just didn't work for me. It actually took away from the first plot (who murdered Alyssa Austin's daughter and why). And though Sandford delays showing us what is going on until the 60 percent or so mark, I found myself losing interest after the reveal and just wanting to finish the book already. Usually Lucas has two cases to follow and in this one, the second case was more interesting.
"Phantom Prey" has Lucas being asked to help his wife Weather's friend Alyssa Austin after the probable murder of her daughter. Alyssa returns home one day to a blood spattered kitchen and the police believe based on blood typing, that her daughter was killed. Alyssa wants Lucas to look into it since she believes the police think she did it. Lucas is initially reluctant, but does it because Weather asks, and he likes puzzles. Lucas is also dealing with a long term surveillance into a Lithuanian gangster (yep they are just all over Minnesota I guess) and a longer worry about the upcoming Republican National Convention.
Lucas and some of the characters we have known for a while slide into gross territory again. I ended up not feeling most of the long term characters like Del. I ended up missing Sloan a lot while reading. I think I like the books best when Lucas is hunting a serial killer. He does do his Lucas thing where he slowly but surely figures out what is going on and what happened, and I like the reveal of who killed Alyssa's daughter and why. I think if Sandford had stuck with that, it would have worked much better. The gangster subplot sucked.
The writing was so-so. I just had a hard time with the reveal and what it meant. It made zero sense to me and I think Sandford was going for shocking when he should have went with believable. Also can we stop with the bad guys trying to kill Lucas everytime? Most criminals don't go looking to kill a cop, it's a terrible idea. And Lucas should be able to catch a tail at this point.
The flow was up and down. Once we get into the whole character of Fairy and Loren and what was really going on I started to skim a bit.
The ending was seriously a case of no one really cares what happened here and I found myself slightly disenchanted.