Days of Prey Tour: Phantom Prey by John Sandford

Phantom Prey, published in May of 2008 is the eighteenth installment of John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport series.

Phantom Prey begins with the disappearance and suspected murder of the adult daughter of a wealthy widow, Alyssa Austin. Austin has returned home one evening and discovered her security system had been turned off, and there are bloodstains on the walls. The blood belongs to her daughter; Frances and nobody can seem to break the case. Alyssa asks her friend, Weather to talk to her husband Lucas Davenport. Davenport is one of the top cop/honcho guys with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, (which is sort of like a FBI type of organization on a state level). Lucas is stuck in the end of winter doldrums, so he agrees to take a look at the case.

By the time March rolls around in Minnesota, everyone is sick and tired of snow, sleet, rain and cold. The winter blahs have hit hard, and Lucas, usually the clotheshorse of the department is stuck in jeans and jacket mode. We find Lucas hanging out in an almost empty apartment that is being used for surveillance on a beautiful pregnant woman, Heather Toms, who happens to be the wife of a fugitive drug lord. Throughout the novel, the characters return to this apartment and watch Heather, who appears to have an aversion to closing the blinds. And it would appear that cops too, enjoy a good show. Eventually, the errant drug lord makes an appearance and gun-play a-plenty ensues.

Using this case as a backdrop and the peripheral characters involved in it as a sounding board, Lucas begins to probe Frances’ disappearance. Frances was caught up in the Goth scene, and as Lucas starts to make inquiries, Goths that may be involved are attacked and brutally murdered. What started as a missing persons case rapidly evolves into a multiple homicide. The title of the book fits perfectly with the crime being solved. But an explanation of the title might ruin the first half of the novel. I’ll just say it fits, and not everyone is as they appear to be on the surface. Leave it to Sandford to take the mundane, tweak it just a bit and make it completely atypical and unexpected.

One of the things I like about the Lucas Davenport series is the relationship he has with his wife. Weather is a terrific character. She’s a successful surgeon, loving wife and mom with a no nonsense persona. Lucas can be dishing the baloney for all he’s worth and she calls him on it every time,

…..So: will you see her, or will I have to nag you into it?”

“Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” Lucas said.

“Tomorrow?”

“I’m pretty tied up. Maybe—“

“Lucas. You haven’t done a thing for a month, except sit around and watch Heather Toms take her clothes off,” Weather said. “You always have this slump at the end of winter. The only way out is work. So find the time.”……..

……….Because, realistically, once Weather had decided that he was going to talk to Austin, there was no way out. If she put her mind to it, she could nag the paint off a garage…”

Tell me, how great is Weather Davenport……

Sandford has a great way of throwing one-liners into his books. They may not have much to do with the story, but they realism

"Golf is the stupidest game ever invented,” Dell said.

“That’s true,” Shrake said, pointing the putter at Del. “But you’re not qualified to say it. You have to play it for twenty years before you can fully appreciate how exquisitely stupid it really is.”

I know this has nothing to do with the story, but it's these little occasional exchanges between characters that really bring the book to life, and usually provide me with a little snicker.

I’ve been waiting for years for Hollywood to come knocking on Mr. Sandford’s door. It’s yet another series that I don’t understand how they’ve missed making into movies. Seriously, we get Saw every year like clockwork, Final Destination up the whazoo, (do they understand the meaning of the word FINAL?) and nobody has written a screenplay about Lucas Davenport? What the heck is wrong with Hollywood?? I’ve given it some thought, and I have a prospective list of actors for the role of Lucas Davenport. Hollywood? Are you listening?

Keanu Reeves—umm…Speed...yeah...oh..Point Break....ugh, pass....

Mark Wahlberg—Ditto Keanu, except The Happening….ugh again….

Hugh Jackman—ehh…maybe, but a little too pretty and he’d have to do a tough guy American accent.

Pierce Brosnan—too purty.

Ben Affleck—ehh—he’d have to beef up a bit and look meaner. He’s a little too sweet faced.

Vince Vaughn—he’s a big guy, but sorta goofy. Not sure he can pull off bad-ass.

Bill Pullman—did cranky guy really well in Bottle Shock. Dye the hair black and he’d do Lucas proud, maybe a touch too old, but I like the guy.

Kurt Russell—perfect, except he’s not quite tall enough and probably a little too old, but I think I love every movie he’s ever made, even Soldier (I know….) But just being Kurt Russell makes him perfect.

All terrific actors, (usually) but I think my top two picks are:

Liev Schreiber—he can play the bad-ass with the best of them, just dye the hair dark and cut him loose.

Dominic West—played a cop on The Wire, looks the part and is believable as the big guy cop.

Yup, that’s it then, Dominic West or Liev Schreiber. This could be HUGE, an entire franchise, a lifetime of roles, like James Bond with a Heineken.

Summing up, if you’ve not read any of the Prey series, I suspect you could pick it up anywhere and enjoy the books. But if you’re a series geek like me, and you’re looking for a new bunch of books, pick up the first one and work your way through. It’s one of my favorite series, and always a good read. You can check out Sandford's complete bibliography here including brief descriptions of each of his novels.

Phantom Prey was great, and make sure you check out Bookworm’s World on Monday, May 17th for the next installment of the Days of Prey Blog Tour. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go. I just started Wicked Prey and
Storm Prey comes out next week. I've got to get caught up!

My rating:

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the review copy.

Blog Tour: After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr

My Thoughts--
Leigh Hunter is a smart, ambitious and popular high school kid, with big future plans. At the request of his step-sister, Millie, whose father has just died, he moves back to his father’s home to help Millie cope with her loss. Maia Morland is a recovering anorexic and self-mutilating girl who has dinner with the Hunter family every night as part of her recovery. At first, Leigh only wants to help his family help Maia, but as time passes, he finds himself falling for her. When three classmates rape Maia and the attack is filmed, Leigh finds that events that change one life can change many.

After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr starts and concludes four years after Leigh and Maia split up, so we readers know from the very beginning that this is not a love story with a “Hollywood” happy ending. Maia is one really messed up young woman, with one of the most narcissistic mothers ever to grace the pages of a novel. Leigh is a thoughtful, kind and generous young man, the type who, frankly, this mom of a teenaged daughter wishes her daughter would meet someday. And Millie, Leigh’s sister is a breath of fresh air, spunky, bright and charming.

After the Moment itself is a breath of fresh air, a book for young adults by a woman who seems to actually like teenagers, (rare it seems sometimes), respects teenagers, (even more rare), and doesn’t generalize or stereotype them. (The rarest of all.) Freymann-Weyr’s teens aren’t all presented as dope-smoking, drunken, horny, disrespectful, obnoxious slackers. Sure, some of them are, but like in real life, we get to see the good ones too. The author gives us a look into the heart of the most maligned creature of all, the teenaged boy. Leigh is sincerely a good guy, trying to make sense of a world that seems to have gone insane. Set against the backdrop of daily news of the Iraq war, Leigh manages to negotiate his teen years, with honesty, sensitivity and decency.

After the Moment is a very good book, one that captures beautifully the pain and joy of growing up in this post 9/11 era.

(Review copy provided by TLC Book Tours, (thanks Trish!)

My rating:



After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr is available at Amazon, and all our favorite indie bookstores. Make a note of this great book for all your teens this Christmas!

For more info, be sure to check out the author's webpage. Just click here and you'll head right over to it. There is a great interview link posted there, lots of links to more reviews and there's even an excerpt from the book. Don't take my word for it...check it out...start clicking!!

Blog Tour: The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter

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Blog Tour: The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan

When Trish from TLC Book Tours asked me if I'd be interested in participating in a blog tour of John Grogan's book, The Longest Trip Home, I couldn't say "yes!!" any faster or louder. I'd read Grogan's wonderful memoir last year and had already reviewed it for the blog, and I loved having an excuse to re-read the book. You can see my review from last year by clicking here. Kristen at BookNAround has written up a terrific synopsis in her review, and since she's the first stop on the tour, I won't repeat all her great work!

John Grogan's memoir alternates between incredibly touching and laugh out loud funny, it reminded me so much of my own childhood. And that's the wonderful thing about this book. Really, about all Grogan and I have in common is that we were born the same year. I'm a farm kid from western Montana, he was a kid from the 'burbs of Detroit. He was from a wildly devout Catholic family, and I grew up in a Mormon family. Yet, as a reader, I felt connected to this man's family and his childhood. I would be reminded reading about his own childhood antics, of the things my brother and sister and I would get into.

Living on a farm, we had milk cows and also a few hundred chickens. My parents sold the eggs from the chicken's to a supermarket in a larger city about 50 miles away once a week. When the chickens would stop laying eggs that could be sold, my dad would turn them out of the cages and let them live out the rest of their lives with free run of the farm. They would continue to lay eggs in unlikely places, often misshapen or small and my older brother and sister and I would find them and stash them away in one of the outbuildings until they reached a nice level of stinky rotten-ness. Then, we would have an all-out war, "rotten egg fight". Of course, being the youngest, it was always them against me, and I always got the shed without the roof as my "fort" and since I was only 6 years old, I couldn't lob an egg all the way across the yard to their "fort" if my life depended on it. I pretty much always ended up covered in stinky rotten eggs, and they were the victors once more.

This all ended the year my cousin, Jack arrived to spend the summer with us. Jack was 7 years older than me, (2 years older than my brother) and he became my "knight in shining armor". He could nail my siblings through a knothole in the siding at 50 yards with a rotten egg. Oh, I spent many more summers covered in stinky rotten egg, but that summer...I was queen of the farm.

It's wonderful how a book about someone else's childhood can lead us down our own memory lane, and that is one of the special things about this book. Pick up a copy of The Longest Trip Home, I didn't think it was possible for John Grogan to top Marley and Me, but I may have loved this book even more!!

You can see John Grogan's website here, and you might want to take a look at the "Share your Stories" tab. After you read The Longest Trip Home, if you're feeling as nostalgic as I did, you may have a great childhood story that you can contribute to the site!

You can check out other stops on this blog tour for the next couple of weeks, and I'm sure you'll really enjoy all the perspectives of these wonderful bloggers.

Monday, October 19th: BookNAround
Thursday, October 22nd: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books
Monday, October 26th: Book Club Classics
Tuesday, October 27th: Readaholic
Tuesday, November 3rd: Bookstack
Thursday, November 5th: The Book Zombie
Monday, November 9th: The 3 R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness
Thursday, November 12th: Cozy Little House
Tuesday, November 17th: Starting Fresh
Date TBD: The Book Lady’s Blog

And if you're curious about what a "professional" reviewer thought about this wonderful book, you might check out the New York Times review here. Little hint--Janet Maslin loves it just as much as I do, but she's a whole heck of a lot more articulate in explaining why!

Thanks much to Trish for including me in the blog tour for this terrific book. My original review was based on a copy of the book I received from the publisher.

Review: Follow Me by Joanna Scott

I’ve been trying to figure out how to review Joanna Scott’s novel, Follow Me for the longest time. I was supposed to participate in the blog tour, way back when, and I completely bailed. At the time, I blamed my inability to get into this book on the fact that I had pneumonia and felt like snail slime. But I did read a couple other books when I was sick and enjoyed them. I decided to pull the book of the shelf and look through it this morning prior to (finally) writing my review. I place little post-it tabs throughout books I read. An interesting phrase may be noted, a word I don’t know, just something that caught my eye. I guess my feelings about Follow Me can be summed up with a couple of paragraphs I marked in the book and the note I made to myself on the post-it.

“Scrappy changeling, there and not there, transforming herself with a snap of her fingers. Good-bye, hello. Dear Sally, I’m your namesake. Wait for me. You should listen to what I have to say. I have the advantage, after all, of living in your future. I know what’s in store for you. Of course, that makes it more difficult to be accurate in my description of the past and keep the facts compatible.”

Or another marked passage,

“Touch your fingertip to a bubble. Feel the pop of cold. Cold, clear water squeezed from subterranean stone. Water seeping into the spring, filling the basin, spilling over the mossy slate ledge, flowing with a persistence peculiar to rivers, tumbling across a wide plateau, over a hillock, and down, down, down, for two hundred and sixty curving miles to the lake.” …..And it goes on and on and on…..

Both post-its say the same thing…..”WTF???” Apparently I was a bit, shall we say, bemused by the writing style. (Note to self…avoid all forms of novels described as “lyrical” by wiser, smarter and classier fellow bloggers…)

Yup, sorry, I hated it. Didn’t get past page 184. And that took me a week. Don’t get me wrong. I really wanted to like it. And I tried. I could even see my Grandma in Sally. I hoped I’d figure out that my grandma, like Sally, started out as a relatively happy girl and the crap in her life made her into such a bitter, cantankerous old biddy. And maybe Sally and Grandma were a lot alike. I’ll never know because the author’s stream of consciousness description’s that just went on and on drove me nuts. And no…it wasn’t just the pain pills and cough syrup talkin’ either! I re-read a couple of pages today, and nope, still can’t read it!

I think it’s probably a pretty good book, but I’m just possibly too shallow for it. So, I’m sorry, Joanna. I think you’re a perfectly lovely person, but this former farm girl is just too uncultured and borderline Redneck to appreciate it!

My rating—is not fair because I didn’t even finish the book, but what the heck, it’s my blog and I can darn well be unfair….

Kitty Raises Hell by Carrie Vaughn blog tour!!

Want some music to read by? Check out the playlist to the left! Filled with all sorts of "supernatural" tunes, its my suggestions for some good Kitty tunes!!


Kitty Norville has annoyed werewolves, irritated vampires, ticked off Senators, riled faeries, aggravated skinwalkers, and provoked followers of an ancient Egyptian cult. What could possibly remain? In Kitty Raises Hell, it would seem that the answer to that question is this: Kitty has infuriated a demon from Hell itself. The evil cult from the last Kitty book has returned and cursed Kitty. Buildings catch fire when she’s around, her pack is threatened and when someone close to her dies, she enlists the aid of a group of paranormal investigators to stop the curse and banish the keeper of it once and for all.

Book six in the Kitty series was a big bummer for me to read. No more Kitty books for a while. I’m going to miss Ben, Kitty and their motley crew. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the change in Kitty throughout the series from a young self centered, good-hearted kid to a responsible caring woman. I read recently that Carrie Vaughn has just turned in book seven. I know I’ll keep an eye out for it, I’m going to want to follow these characters to whatever ending Vaughn has planned for them.

My rating:

(Click HERE for a chance to win Carrie Vaughn's newest, Kitty Raises Hell or the whole 6 book set!!)

Join in the fun of the Kitty blog tour by checking out these blogs:

Books Amy Reads
Booking Mama
Cafe of Dreams
Cheryls BookNook
A Circle of Books
Amateur Delivre
Cindy's Love of Books
Confessions of a Romance Book Addict
Drey's Library
Stephanie's Books
Book Thoughts by Lisa
Chikune
Foreign Circus Library
Ms. Bookish
Jenns Bookshelf
My Friend Amy
Literary Feline
Wendi's Book Corner
In Bed With Books
Write for a Reader
The Tome Traveller
Gramma Reads
Sams BookBlog
Book Series Reviews
Books By TJ Baff
Amber Stults
Wrighty's Reads
Book Zombie
Fiction to Fruition
Darby's Closet
This Book for Free
Unmainstream Mom
(If I missed anyone, please let me know....)

But before you go, scroll down for more Kitty! I've been "Kitty-ing" all week!!

Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn

(Click HERE for a chance to win Carrie Vaughn's newest, Kitty Raises Hell or the whole 6 book set!!)

Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand follows our heroine and her sidekick/lawyer/fiancé, Ben, to Vegas, baby! Yup, they’re gonna tie the knot, drink frou frou drinks with little umbrellas and soak up the sun. Of course, our workaholic werewolf can’t resist the offer to do a live tv show from Vegas, while Ben finds out that werewolves special abilities lead to “special” poker playing advantages. While looking for special acts to feature on her tv special, Kitty comes across a Vegas magician who might be much more than he appears, as well as a live animal show, featuring so much more than just animals. All this adds to the issue of the convention in the same hotel as Kitty and Ben. A convention of werewolf hating bounty hunters, who seem pretty determined that Kitty’s frou-frou drinks by the pool just won’t ever happen.

I don’t know how Carrie Vaughn does it! Each book in this fun series has something to offer. Its always interesting to see what direction the author is going to go, and its always fun to watch Kitty’s relationships grow and change. I think I’ll miss the series when I complete number 6!

My rating:

Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby

Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby is due out today. I have to confess that due to the current state of chaos in my house, I haven't finished the book yet. I'm about 2/3 of the way finished and its wonderful!

From the Publisher:

Theodore Mead Fegley has always been the smartest person he knows. By age 12, he was in high school, and by 15 he was attending a top-ranking university. And now, at the tender age of 18, he's on the verge of proving the Riemann Hypothesis, a mathematical equation that has mystified academics for almost 150 years. But only days before graduation, Mead suddenly packs his bags and flees home to rural Illinois. What has caused him to flee remains a mystery to all but Mead and a classmate whose quest for success has turned into a dangerous obession.

At home, Mead finds little solace. His past ghosts haunt him; his parents don't understand the agony his genius has caused him, nor his desire to be a normal kid, and his dreams seem crushed forever. He embarks on a new life's journey -- learning the family business of selling furniture and embalming the dead--that disappoints and surprises all who knew him as "the young Fegley genius."

Equal parts academic thriller and poignant coming-of-age story, LIFE AFTER GENIUS follows the remarkable journey of a young man who must discover that the heart may know what the head hasn't yet learned.

I think we've all known some people that are just a bit..well...different. In fact, I think that there is a little bit of Mead in all of us. We all feel like we're just a little peculiar sometimes. It's been very easy to empathize with Mead, the story hasn't disappointed and I can't wait to finish it!

You can read an excerpt from the book here, Life After Genius

I hope I get my painting done early today, I really want to finish the book and see how it ends. So far...a very good read!!