Book Review - "Ocean Prey" by John Sandford

 (This post contains no spoilers.)

Did you ever go to a movie that you enjoyed, and then learned after the fact that the original director's cut of the movie was something like three and a half hours long, and all you can think of is that the movie you liked would have been God-awful at 3 and 1/2 hours long, and thank God for editing?

Well, that is how I felt after reading John Sandford's newest Lucas Davenport novel, "Ocean Prey."  At 420 pages in length, this one was too long by about 50-75 pages.

The story:  three US Coast Guardsmen are murdered in cold blood by drug runners in Florida, who are seeking to pick up vast numbers of kilos of pure heroin that were dropped of the coast by drug dealers from Mexico (or maybe they were from Venezuela or Colombia) on the ocean floor at a specified GPS location. The FBI is gaining no traction on finding the killers so the US Marshalls Service, in the person of Lucas Davenport, is called into the case.  The Marshalls recruit Minnesota state police detective Virgil Flowers to go undercover and pose as an expert scuba diver to infiltrate the scumbag drug dealers who killed the Coast Guard guys.  The case has expanded to not only find the killers, but to recover the remaining sealed kilos of heroin on the ocean floor AND tie it all back to a Mafia kingpin who is in New York City.  There were more layers to this story than a debutante's wedding cake.

Did you get confused and tired just reading that above paragraph?  Just imagine plowing through 420 pages of it, and I left out the pages and pages and PAGES of intricate detail involving the technical difficulties in scuba diving in the ocean when a diver goes beyond depths of 50 feet....and 100 feet....and 120 feet...and 150 feet.  "ENOUGH ALREADY" you wanted to  scream.  I have loved the Sandford/Davenport Prey series over the years and usually finish them in two or three sittings.  This one took over a week and days went by where I wouldn't even pick the book back up to resume reading.  My wife, also a fan of the series, had the same reaction.

All that said, however, when Sandford finally got around to bringing this story to a conclusion,  he reverted to form and the last fifty or so pages were slam-bang top shelf stuff.  If only he could have pared it  down a bit and made the entire book like that.  Oh, and be sure to read the "Author's Note" at the end of the book.  It's kind of funny.

I also have to say that Lucas Davenport, the character, has taken a bit of a dark turn. It started in the previous novel, "Masked Prey" where Lucas went rogue to take down the bad guys, and it has continued to the point where even the other characters in the story are commenting upon it.  Makes me wonder where Sandford is leading us.

If you are a devoted fan of Sandford's Davenport "Prey" novels, you have to read this one, but to this reader at least, it was a disappointment.

One and one-half Stars from The Grandstander.