Sandford, John. Mind Prey (1995)
Berkley, 354 pages, $6.99 paperback
ISBN 0 425 15289 8
Mind Prey opens with a memorable simile: “The storm blew up late in the afternoon, tight, gray clouds hustling over the lake like dirty, balled up sweat socks spilling from a basket” (p. 1). Soon Andi Manette, a psychiatrist, and her two young daughters (Genevieve, age nine, and Grace, age twelve) are kidnapped from the parking lot of the girls’ school during the rainstorm. Since Andi and her husband, George Dunn, are in the process of getting a divorce, Dunn becomes a prime suspect.
When the kidnapper begins calling Davenport on his cell phone to give him clues, Lucas realizes the kidnapper must also be involved with computer games. With the help of his childhood friend Elle Kruger, now Sister Mary Joseph, Lucas unravels the clues.
Lucas spends this entire book carrying around an engagement ring. He’s got it bad:
Weather was not pretty, but she reached him with a power he hadn’t experienced before: His attraction had grown so strong that it scared him at times. He’d lie awake at night, watching her sleep, inventing nightmares in which she left him. (p. 52)
And Weather seems to be changing Lucas: “He kept the ring in the bottom of his sock drawer, waiting for the right moment. He could feel it there and wondered if it made black sparkles in the dark” (p. 52). This is downright poetic, not a thought the earlier Lucas would have had.
© 1997 by Mary Daniels Brown
