Abandoned by Booklikes

Well it was a few short months ago when I almost quit this series. I was tired of the Letty is definitely a psychopath but let's ignore it shall we that was going on in the series. And the total retconning of a character in order to make them die so Lucas could be "torn." Bah. Fridging women characters is BS and I wish authors would stop. "Silken Prey" has Lucas trying to find out if a Senator running for re-election was looking at child pornography as he is being accused of. Instead Lucas finds out that the Senator has been set up, but the who behind it is a surprise. I also liked that for some reason Sandford zeroed in on Kidd and his wife Lauren in this one. I don't know if I buy that hot painter is secretly a hacker story-line, but just let myself go limp and enjoy it. I do think the ending is Sandford trying to set Lucas against another epic nemesis like Clara Rinker. It just doesn't quite work though. I still gave this five stars though. 

"Silken Prey" starts off with a murder. We have a man being taken away by two other men and murdered. We then jump to Lucas waking up and being asked by the governor of Minnesota to look into whether a man running for re-election (Porter Smalls) really was looking at child pornography on his campaign computer. Lucas quickly ascertains after some digging via his local hacker called ICE and being pointed to Jason Kidd's direction that someone set up Smalls. Readers quickly find out who is behind this, but Lucas and friends have a ways to catch up. And then the hits keep coming with more threads to pull on this conspiracy. 

Lucas seems more mellow this time around. Thank goodness we don't have a lot of Letty. She appears, but seems muted. I wish that she go off to college already, but alas. We get to see Lucas do what he does so well, takes a look at something and starts to tear it apart. He is definitely giving a helping hand via Kidd though. 

We also have Lucas realizing that he has to be careful on this one though since it can mean the end of his career and also of people close to him like Del. 

We get more insight into Kidd and we find out more about his wife Lauren too. I initially thought the whole story-line didn't work, but in the end as I said just said eh and let it go. Hopefully Sandford revisits it. 

Flowers shows up and honestly I am still squicked out about the first book in his series I read so I tended to just ignore him for the most part. 

The writing was good and though we know who is behind it, it was exciting to read to see how Lucas gets there too and of course Lucas being Lucas, he can't help but poke the bear. 

The ending definitely leaves Lucas with a very powerful enemy and I wonder how that may impact the rest of the series.