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Gathering prey
566 pages
A gritty, fast-paced descent into a transient underworld where a fiercely protective father hunts a ruthless predator.
What it feels like
Reading this thriller feels like riding shotgun on a tense, high-stakes road trip into the dark corners of the American Midwest. The narrative moves at a brisk, relentless clip, pulling you into a gritty and menacing atmosphere where transient subcultures hide deadly secrets. The prose is sharp and unpretentious, relying heavily on snappy, pragmatic dialogue and a cynical but deeply human worldview. At its core, the emotional texture is defined by a fierce father-daughter bond, grounding the adrenaline-fueled hunt for a serial killer in genuine familial stakes. It is a deeply satisfying read for those who devour hardboiled detective fiction, offering a propulsive blend of procedural grit, dark humor, and the visceral thrill of a relentless pursuit.
- Mood
- tense
- menacing
- atmospheric
- gritty
- Tone
- cynical
- pragmatic
- gritty
- darkly humorous
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- father-daughter bond · hidden subcultures · predatory violence · vulnerability of the marginalized · relentless pursuit
- The writing
- Sharp, dialogue-heavy, and unpretentious, driven by a journalistic eye for gritty, unsettling details.
- The arc
- Moves from protective curiosity to a high-stakes, adrenaline-fueled race against a ruthless predator.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave hard-hitting, fast-moving serial killer thrillers anchored by a tough, fiercely protective protagonist.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- serial murder
- harm to unhoused people
About the book
When his adopted daughter's friend reports that someone has been killing off a circle of nomadic panhandlers, Lucas travels to North Dakota, where he encounters a dangerously violent subculture.
"The extraordinary new Lucas Davenport thriller from #1 New York Times-bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize-winner John Sandford. They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes-they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them. Lucas Davenport's adopted daughter, Letty, is home from college when she gets a phone call from a woman Traveler she'd befriended in San Francisco. The woman thinks somebody's killing her friends, she's afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing. She's hiding out in North Dakota, and she doesn't know what to do. Letty tells Lucas she's going to get her, and, though he suspects Letty's getting played, he volunteers to go with her. When he hears the woman's story, though, he begins to think there's something in it. Little does he know. In the days to come, he will embark upon an odyssey through a subculture unlike any he has ever seen, a trip that will not only put the two of them in danger-but just may change the course of his life"--
Description from Open Library.
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