Golden Prey

Near the start of Thriller Award–winner Sandford’s solid 27th Lucas Davenport novel (after 2016’s Extreme Prey), holdup man Garvin Poole and his gang hit a dope counting-house in Biloxi, Miss. During the robbery, Poole fatally shoots four drug dealers and one of their granddaughters, a six-year-old girl. Davenport, a former Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension official who’s now a U.S. marshal with the freedom to take on any case he wants anywhere in the country, decides to go after Poole. Davenport assembles all available information on Poole, his family, his associates, and his girlfriend. Meanwhile, Luis Soto, “a bad man [who] liked being a bad man,” and torture specialist Charlene Kort are working on behalf of the robbed drug boss; Davenport gets a sample of Soto and Kort’s handiwork when he finds Poole’s parents brutally slain at their home in La Vergne, Tenn. Sandford’s trademark blend of rough humor and deadly action keeps the pages turning until the smile-inducing wrap-up, which reveals the fates of a number of his quirky, memorable characters. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Apr.)