In the best of the John Sandford's Prey novels, there are usually two or three scenes where he brings the reader to a kind of momentum nirvana. This is a point where you're turning the pages as fast as your eyes can scan the words. These aren't necessarily action scenes, although Sandford can do action as well as anybody. More often these are times in the story where some break in the case has happened or some other critical event has left the police scrambling. People are being rousted out of bed. Phones are being shouted into. Police cars are rushing around with sirens blaring. The hunt is goddamn ON! And more than once I have found myself rising out of my chair or sitting up in bed with the urge to shout, "Go! Go! Go!" 
 With over 30 books to his credit, including this 21st Prey novel, you'd think Sandford would have started to run out of gas at some point. He's managed this with only a few duds along the way and maintained a level of sheer entertainment that's pretty amazing. Even more surprising is that that I think the last two books he wrote, this one and last year's Bad Blood, are among his very best. 
 When Lucas Davenport was introduced way back in 1989 in Rules of Prey he was a hot shot Minneapolis police lieutenant who got called into the high profile shit storm cases that sold newspapers and cost politicians elections. Lucas is smart and tough as well as a master manipulator with a natural feel for media and politics that helps him make his bosses look good, but what he really lives for are the cases that allowed him to hunt the worst kinds of killers. Over the years he's advanced in law enforcement and settled down a great deal while still loving to jump into the interesting investigations. Here, Sandford gives us a look at Lucas before we met him in that first book. 
 In present day Minneapolis, the bodies of two girls are found buried in a basement during a housing demolition. The case goes back to the '80s when Davenport was still a patrolman. Young Davenport liked being a cop but was starting to find patrol boring and thinking about a career change. When the two young girls went missing he was temporarily assigned to the detectives and sent to go around knocking on doors. Thanks to a little luck and his own ambition Davenport ended up being a key figure in the case, and his career took off. Lucas wasn't satisfied with the resolution at the time, and with the discovery of the bodies he fears that he's responsible for letting a child killer roam free for over twenty years. 
 The first half of this book is a flashback to the younger Davenport, and as a long time fan of the character it's a helluva a lot of fun. Sandford shows us a younger, hungrier Lucas who still has the qualities we've always known in the older character, but he makes him a bit rougher along with being more ruthless and reckless. Younger Davenport is still figuring out the detective game, but this first case is his introduction to the thrill of the hunt. It'd turn him into a stone cold junkie for the chase, and Davenport's addiction to catching bad guys is still present as a middle aged husband and father. This also functions as a soft reboot of the Davenport timeline that allows Sandford reduce the character's age a bit. 
 Sandford is still my favorite of the thriller writers you'll see on the best seller lists, and he doesn't show any signs of slowing down yet. 
 * Update 10/5/16 - I didn't catch this the first time I read this, but I've been going through a few of the Sandford books again lately, and there's an absolute whopper of a continuity error here. (view spoiler)[A previous Prey book had established that Marcy was married and had a kid. Here, she's still single and thinking about children. (hide spoiler)] 
 Next: Lucas gets mugged and investigates the massacre of a family in Stolen Prey.