There he joined the staff of The Saint Paul Pioneer Press as a features reporter.

In 1978 John Sandford was looking for a new challenge. He used his Bachelor’s in American history and Masters in Journalism from the University of Iowa to hone his skills, becoming a top writer at the Miami Herald. Before his first two releases in 1989, John Sandford wrote for the Miami Herald, for seven years during the 1970’s. So from then on John Roswell Camp became John Sandford. The later took off, becoming increasingly more popular than the first. He had two books coming out that year and they decided to release one, The Fools Rush In, under his real name and a second under a pseudonym, Rules of Prey. He created the pseudonym at the request of his publisher in 1989. But that is the real name of an author I am sure you all have heard of, John Sandford. Keeping a long series fresh is a challenge for any author, but it looks as if John Sandford has started out in a promising new direction here.When you think of the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and bestselling novelist John Roswell Camp, you may end up drawing a blank.

In fact, the contrast between the two female characters makes Clara look even more formidable than she would on her own. But she’s portrayed as so over-the-top that it’s impossible to take her seriously she’s more a caricature than a character. There’s even a second female major character in this novel. But in Clara Rinker, Davenport seems to have met his match in intellect, intuitiveness, coldness, and cunning. Most of his other female characters-even the more fully developed ones like Lily Rothenberg, a police lieutenant from New York City-exist mainly to hop into bed with Davenport. I suspect Sandford has given us Clara Rinker because of criticism that he can’t create a dynamic female character. When Rinker does a job in Minnesota and, for the first time in her career, makes a tiny mistake, she and Lucas engage in an intellectual cat-and-mouse game.

And what a villain it is: Clara Rinker, the best hit woman (or hit man) around. In his latest Lucas Davenport thriller John Sandford does something different: he focuses on the villain as much as on the hero. Putnam’s Sons, 339 pages, $24.95 hardcover

Rules of prey by john sandford