John Sandford: Chosen Prey

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Lucas Davenport, a detective in Minneapolis, is cool. Cool, and confused. He'd been in a long-term relationship with a woman called Weather until she was taken hostage by a psychopath in a case Lucas was heading. They're back together now, but tentatively.

Lucas can understand this: "She had the guy's brains on her face. It made an impression." Lucas is sensitive. Sort of. He's a hardened loner of a cop, but he cooks. He makes pasta with his special meat sauce: ground moose tenderloin.

He's not altogether civilised though. When Weather decides to throw a dinner party she tells him he's out of paper napkins. "Never had any," he said.

"What'd you use?" "Toilet paper," he said.

Well, no guy is the perfect catch. And Lucas has other things on his mind. The bodies of young women begin turning up. As do a series of strangely detailed pornographic drawings. Somewhere there's a link to the local university to be uncovered. Somehow James Qatar is involved.

Qatar is "an art history professor, and a writer, a womaniser and genial pervert and pipe smoker, a thief and a laughing man and a killer."

In other words, he's as well-rounded a character as the man whose job it is to find a killer.

Davenport really is cool. And so is this. Smart, funny, good dialogue and a main character who you'd like to meet over a meal of anything other than steaming ground moose.

Simon & Schuster

$34.95