CERTAIN PREY

After ten thrillers in his series about Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport (Secret Prey, 1998, etc.), Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist John Camp, writing under his Sandford pen name, hits a home run over the curve of the earth as the brilliantly swift Certain Prey sinks a meat hook under the reader’s jaw on page one and never lets up. In the opening scene, Clara Rinker, a 16-year-old runaway and nude dancer, is raped one night behind her St. Louie nudie bar and within two pages she has her revenge, battering her fat-trucker rapist’s head in with a metal baseball bat. Her coolness about the murder leads her to become a hit woman for the Mafia. By age 20, reader-friendly Clara’s making so much money as an assassin-for-hire that she goes to business school to figure out how best to use the cash she’s been piling up under various names. When Minneapolis defense attorney Carmel Loan decides she wants a rival removed, she has a Mafia client hire Clara for her. Clara does the hit, killing Barbara Allen, but a cop witnesses the deed and is shot as well. Which draws in Lucas. Will the spiritedly attractive villain survive her encounter with Lucas and go on, like Hannibal Lecter, to enjoy an even greater feast of crimes? Top suspense.