In this one, a set of killings takes place where the victims have been raped, tortured, and ceremonially displayed - men as well as women. Suspicion falls on Charlie Pope, who's just been let out of prison after serving time as a murderer. But as the investigation continues, it looks like Pope wasn't acting alone, or maybe even at all..

This was pretty disappointing. The writing was competent enough (this is I think the 16th book so it's late in the series) but the plot was not very original (serial killer fooling the cops) and the sex and violence was unneccessarily explicit. It also has echoes of Silence of the Lambs, since a fair amount of the investigation is based on getting information out of some of Pope's fellow inmates, who are themselves insane but have a high level of intelligence.

After recently finishing Mortal Prey, which has really strong characters and an original story, this was something of a let-down. I think my expectations for Prey books are pretty high and this failed to match them. This was by no means a poor book, and I could imagine it being a best-seller on its own merits, but it's not as good as I know Sandford can be.

Re-read this as part of the project to listen to all of them in order. And I think I'd remembered all the stuff in the review above so was expecting it to be a bit weak.

But in fact I thought it wasn't that bad: I didn't find the sex/violence to be as out-of-place as I'd remembered, and even though I vaguely remembered what happened, it was still quite a gripping read.

Completed : 25-Aug-2007 (audiobook)

Completed : 05-Oct-2014 (audiobook)