Rules of Prey (Lucas Davenport, No. 1) Mass Market Paperback – August 2, 2005

Enjoyable police procedural starring seductive detective who operates confidently in moral gray zones, loves manipulating the media, and loves smart women even more.

Enjoyed the book a great deal. Some things, like his main love interest in this book, I didn't like at all. I don't care for spiteful, dishonest, uncaring women that intentionally trap men. Enough about that. The mystery was great. I liked Lucas. Looking forward to more in series.

Lucas Davenport starts off as a bit of a James Bond type. From the first book: "He was slender and dark-complexioned, with straight black hair going gray at the temples and a long nose over a crooked smile. One of his central upper incisors had been chipped and he never had it capped. He might have been an Indian except for his blue eyes. His eyes were warm and forgiving. Though his eyes were warm, his smile betrayed him.If the chill of his smile sometimes overwhelmed the warmth of his eyes, it didn't happen so frequently as to become a social handicap."Rules of Prey is fast paced, dark novel pitting an unconventional policeman (Lucas Davenport) and an organized serial killer - who is quite smart. They called him "the maddog". From the novel: "The maddog was intelligent. He was a member of the bar. He derived rules. Never kill anyone you know. Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. Never carry a weapon after it has been used. Isolate yourself from random discovery.Beware of leaving physical evidence."The character development is extremely well done. The story is told in third person, enabling one to get into the minds of both cop and killer. This is unusual - we generally get just one or the other. It gets off the a fast start, and shows why Sandford was able to leverage this into a major series with a huge following. It probably took more time to write than later books, and was well thought out.There is a lot to like about Davenport. Davenport is a pretty believable cop. He doesn't always solve the case. He is dependent on the back-up of his fellow boys (and girls) in blue. He's also multi-dimensional. He spends much of his off-time playing role-playing games, including a Civil War game that he helped create.

Life is a game.Some break the rules.Others break the rules to punish rule breakers.Are they the same, or just different sides of the same coin?Here presented in stark, chilling, thrilling details…A plot full of surprises and gasps, bending lawsTwisted for both the analyst and the casual fanBeware that they describe us all.

The first Lucas Davenport novel is a revelation. It is a fast paced, intelligent, deep, action packed crime novel with a truly sick and heinous bad guy. The hero of the tale - and that of the entire, incredibly popular long running series is a rich, tough, loner cop going by the name of Lucas Davenport. He’s popular with the ladies, though, but the man’s got a temper on him, so make sure you don't cross him on your journey into make-believe-world.The women of Minneapolis are being targeted, tortured and assaulted, then killed by a maniac, going by the name of the ’Mad dog’. He is clever enough to commit these crimes whilst obeying a set of rules, and yet he is crazy enough to leave a copy of one of these rules with each corpse. Bad news for the maddog, though: Lucas Davenport doesn't play by no rules.The book is realistic enough to acknowledge the power of the media in the modern, techno-dominated world we live in, along with the problems and benefits it brings. In some respects, the book is an old fashioned police procedural, too, which makes it all the more fascinating from that perspective, too.Sub-mysteries abound that are all solved along the way, and even though the reader may think they are pivotal to the main story line, most of the time they are not, but still, they act as strong reminders of the frailty of the human condition and the power and strength love and friendship plays in the world we live in.I think I am going to like reading these books. As i have already mentioned, Lucas Davenport is one tough, but cool, cat. He is flawed (but aren’t we all?) but he is not broken. He lives alone in a large (but empty) family home so he has not quite given up on finding another soul mate. First of all, though, he has a monster to catch. I had better get back to the exciting prose and action amongst the 479 pages of whodunnit-thriller-police-procedural-awesomeness before I miss anything.Four stars for an excellent beginning to a legendary series.Bye!!!!!