I don't have much to say about Mind Prey, by John Sandford, other than that it's your generic crime fiction. It has cops, witty banter, a maverick detective, a bad guy, and kidnapping victims. Nothing particularly special about it. The only reason I picked it up was because I was getting bored waiting at the JFK airport, and I wandered into a random kiosk to see if I could find something good to read. I found The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I have been dying to read for quite a while, but I had to put it down when I saw the hefty price tag of $28. It was one of the saddest moments in my life when I had to put the book down in favor of the $10 Mind Prey due to my meager college student budget.
Anyway, the protagonist of this book is a investigator/software programmer named Lucas Davenport. The antagonist is a psychopath and pyromaniac named John Mail, who kidnaps his psychiatrist from his teenage years, Andi Manette, as well as her two young daughters. He repeatedly beats and rapes her, attempts to murder her youngest daughter, murders two other people, and leaves cryptic clues for the police for his own sick amusement. Lucas Davenport eventually outsmarts him and corners him in a pipe, and ultimately rescues the kidnappees in the nick of time as well.
Overall, this book did not leave much of an impression on me. I felt that it could have been heavily condensed, as it was frequently slow at times. Judging by the title, the blurb on the back cover and the introduction by the author, I was expecting this book to be more of an examination of the criminal mind, especially since psychiatrists are involved and the author himself has had before a "good look a the mind of an intelligent, yet seriously deranged sex criminal," due to his experience as a newspaper reporter. It would have been a lot more fascinating if it had been like that, at least to me, since I take a sort of morbid curiosity in reading about what makes psychopaths tick. The book was also fairly predictable, so much so that it took away much of the suspense as well, and the person pulling the strings behind John Mail is, as it often is, the person with the least amount of "screen time," so I wasn't too surprised. This book lacked a good twist and failed to hook me. I read through it with a sort of vague indifference since I wasn't too emotionally invested in any of the characters. Mind Prey really could have benefited from being a lot shorter.
I kind of wish I had spent the $10 on food instead. This book is sitting on my nightstand, where it'll probably stay for the rest of the school year until I move out of my apartment and toss it in with the rest of the books on my shelf back home. I doubt I'll ever read it again, and I'll probably end up giving it away, donating it, or selling it for a penny in a garage sale. All in all, I would say Mind Prey is more of a book suitable for reading on a plane, in a waiting room, or on the toilet. It's not bad, but it's not original or enthralling enough to warrant a second glance. I don't think I'll read the rest of the books in the Lucas Davenport series either. I love a good mystery, but crime fiction really isn't my thing. I get enough of that from watching Castle, Bones, The Mentalist, and Psyche.
No comments:
Post a Comment