Hidden Prey by John Sandford

Sometime when I wasn't looking, they domesticated Lucas Davenport. I guess it makes sense: this is the 15th Prey novel in 15 years, and Davenport has aged. And with age, he's mellowed and settled down. All of which means he's virtually unrecognizable from the crazy motherfucker in Rules of Prey. It's been a gradual transition, and an understandable one, but an unwelcome one nevertheless. Maybe it's just that my world is currently being rocked by two Jacks (Reacher & Bauer) who embody the unhinged win-at-all-costs gonzo action that used to be Davenport's signature, but this new Davenport is nothing so much as neutered and bland. The man that used to push his prey (heh) beyond their limits now chairs multi-agency meetings in hotel conference rooms. The guy with the hair-trigger temper and steady roster of assholes to shake down for dirt now works for the governor and handles politically sensitive issues to keep the boss out of trouble. The charismatic sex machine now disapproves of two people on the case hopping into bed together. And the uncompromising singleton with a strong ex-girlfriend and daughter he barely acknowledges is now a happy husband and daddy who frets over his garage door. I picked up my first Prey book in 1998, just after leaving Minneapolis to live in Seattle. I chose it for the reminders of home, but the troubled, depressed, borderline suicidal, rulebreaking clothes horse game inventor is what kept me coming back. He was complex. And tortured. And I liked him that way. I think Sandford has fallen victim to the same tragic disease as Patricia Cornwell: he likes his character just a little too much. He doesn't want to see him suffer. But suffering is what Lucas needs, and what we need. Even if we think we want Davenport to be happy, we really don't. He needs the pain. It defines him and keeps him running. The best thing that could happen to Lucas at this point is an industrial accident that wipes out his home and family but spares his Porsche.

Persuader by Lee Child

The last couple of months have been all about Dennis Lehane and Lee Child for me. For a while there, I was alternating through the catalog titles in Lehane's Kenzie / Gennaro series and Child's Jack Reacher series. I finished the Lehane a few weeks ago, so I've been mainlining Reacher ever since. I think I'm in love with this character. Maybe it's a coincidence that I'm also currently obsessed with another Jack - Bauer, from "24" - but I'm noticing a big weak spot for ultra-competent men with violent tendencies and few words. The strong, silent type, if you will. This is the last paperback in the series for now (the eighth, The Enemy, is still only available in hardback and I'm going to try to wait), and it ends really strong. This is the first book to be written in first person, which made me extremely unhappy at the outset. I don't know if I was afraid that Reacher would share too many thoughts with us or what, but my fears were totally unfounded. In fact, the first person narration made it perhaps the best of the bunch. It's also the first one where I haven't been able to guess at all the major plot points well ahead (sometimes even from the very beginning), which made it even more fun. There's a little note at the end of the book that said he enjoyed writing the flashbacks so much that the next novel takes us back to Reacher while he was still in the Army. I don't know if I'm going to succeed in waiting for paperback. Good stuff!

Pompeii by Robert Harris

This book made me strangely maudlin at the end. It's not like I didn't know what was coming. I was in Pompeii and Naples in 1996, and at the time read quite a bit about the 76CE eruption. But what throughout the book felt like a fairly cold procedural for Roman life all came into focus during the eruption. I was pretty impatient through the first two-thirds. The ending was a foregone conclusion and the foreplay was irritating me. I get like that sometimes. When I saw "Titanic" for the first time in the theater, I repeatedly muttered "sink the boat" under my breath. It's become a sort of catchphrase in our house for "we know what's going to happen; get on with it already!". I had that experience repeatedly during this book. In fact, it's a lot like "Titanic" in that it uses an anonymous identification character to tell the story of a great historical tragedy, and it pretty much just uses him as a device to focus on the coolness of his environment. In "Titanic", we get Jack & Rose in the cargo hold and the engine room. In Pompeii, we get Marcus Attilius in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Misenum, and even at the summit of good ol' Vesuvius on the day of the eruption. It was only once the eruption was underway and the book was nearing its end that I became strangely sad at the fate of these characters. I can't say I was suprised, given its role as a disaster book and the well-known subject matter, but I was saddened nonetheless. One thing is for certain, though: this book wants to be a movie. Somebody call James Cameron.

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

This may well be the very pinnacle of consumable fic. I started and finished this book in the same day, which at 593 pages would seem to have been a Herculean task. But the going was easy and the chapter breaks were nearly constant, and I just kept going and going and going. The movie "National Treasure" has been called a stupider version of this story, but I'm not sure that's true. The stupider part, that is. This one's pretty dumb. There's a whole lot of conjecture and outright insanity presented as cold fact, however, so I'm not surprised that this book has spawned a whole host of "truth about the DaVinci Code" books. Actually, yes I am. I'm surprised that this book is the phenomenon it is, frankly. There are so many better stories out there.