Rules of Prey is done with

I said I was going to try and finish it by Thursday and I did. I really enjoyed it. The ending felt a bit rushed, like Sandford was trying to end the thing as quickly as he could without running the entire train off a cliff. It doesn't hurt story, but the resolution just felt abrupt.

Rating: 8/10.

Rules of Prey: John Sandford writes a pretty fine book

I haven't finished this book yet, but I can't not talk about! Rules of Prey, the first in the Lucas Davenport series, is just a damn good mystery.

Davenport is a police lieutenant working in Minneapolis who has to track down and stop a deranged serial killer known as maddog (real serial killers don't capitalize their names, apparently). This is one seriously twisted individual who gets off on watching the moment his victims die. He also leaves one of his rules behind on each of his victims, hence the title of the book. The story shifts between him and Davenport as the POV characters, with the former either planning and committing his murderers or watching the media coverage of it, while Davenport's chunk of the book involves the aforementioned attempts at catching maddog, as well as following his private life.

I really like Davenport. On one hand, he sort of fits the mold of the stereotypical lone wolf tough guy who, prior to the story, has killed five men in the line of duty in separate incidents and cleared on every one. Yet, the views into his private life show a depth that makes the character likeable. My favorite thing is that Davenport has a very lucrative side job designing table top role-playing and wargames. As a self-described nerd, I really dug that bit of originality. It's like if Colombo wrote fantasy novels or something.

We see other parts of his private life as well, such as his relationships with Jennifer Carey and Carla Ruiz. Carey is a reporter with one of the news stations in town and honestly, I don't like her. She constantly waffles between caring for Davenport and wanting to form a relationship with him, and acting like a total asshole to him while digging for any kind of scoop she can report on. In one instance, it ruins a character's life when she not only outs him as a suspect in the murders, but also as a gay man. Rules of Prey came out in 1989, so public knowledge of his orientation isn't exactly going to help him even after he's been completely cleared of suspicion.

Carla Ruiz is notable for being the only one of the maddog's victims to survive. She manages to fight him off and leave me badly bruised for his trouble in the process. Davenport takes a liking to her and vice versa and they end up forming a relationship of sorts while she's hiding out in his cabin in the woods. I'm pretty sure there's some serious ethical problems with a police lieutenant having a romantic relationship with a crime victim, but I don't recall it ever being addressed.

maddog himself is interesting because of his day job as a mild mannered lawyer. It's established in the first chapter that he's two scoops of nuts. He refers to all of his victims as Chosen and himself as the One. He only kills when he finds a new Chosen and even then, only when the urge to kill reaches an unbearable point. Fair warning for those who might be triggered by it or otherwise not okay with depictions of sexual assault, but yeah, there's sexual assault. maddog rapes his victims before he kills them, though in one case he admits that he doesn't have to in order to get off on the murder itself. Fortunately, it's not graphic or even remotely detailed, so there's that.

But man, John Sandford can ratchet things up to 11 real damn quick. There's a scene in the book where the police are staking out the home of a TV reporter Davenport has been feeding false information to in the hopes that the maddog will try and attack her and get caught in the trap. He almost does, but manages to flee, which leads to one hell of a clusterfuck between a pair of cops and a homeowner. Basically, during the foot chase, maddog crosses through a backyard and riles up a pair of dobermans. Those dogs attack the first cop as soon as he jumps into the yard and his partner naturally comes to his defense and her own and shoots them. Well, about this time, their owner bursts into the backyard with a shotgun and not knowing what the hell is going on, opens up and shoots the second cop twice. Her partner then avenges her by blowing the homeowner away. The ensuing chaos allows the maddog to escape. It's an utterly wild scene.

I'm aiming to finish Rules of Prey tomorrow and I believe it's building to a satisfying climax.

I've pretty much committed myself to the mystery genre

And maybe I ought to be committed!

So anyways, the public library in my town does a book sale twice a year and the second one was last week. The last two days are a bag sale where you can fill up a bag for $3 ($1 on the last day) and it's one of my favorite times of the year because I can stock up on books for cheap. Now, in the past, I've had a habit of buying a ton of books and unfortunately never reading them, so this time I went a different route. They didn't have much in the way of science fiction and fantasy that piqued my interest, so I decided to focus on buying mysteries instead.

And buy, did I ever. Counting the ones I already owned, I now have an entire small bookcase full of mystery novels. There's too many to name individually, but here's a rundown on all I grabbed:

Twelve of Martha Grimes' Richard Jury
Nine of Tony Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee and John Sandford's Lucas Davenport
Seven of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey
Two Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and The Sunday Philosophy Club), John Mortimer (Rumpole and another book), and Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford
One Sue Grafton, Dennis Lehane, Jo Nesbo, and Karin Slaughter.

So yeah, it's a lot. I plan on easing myself into the genre rather than diving headfirst. I've read a few mysteries before, so that should help the transition.