• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2016 April #2
  *Starred Review* Marlys Purdy is a progressive leftover from the Iowa farm movement, which gained traction in the Midwest during the family-farm crisis of the eighties. The most well-known manifestation of that time was the Farm Aid concert series. Marlys' son Cole is high-functioning but definitely damaged after an IED rattled his brain during a tour in Iraq. The Purdys lost their farm in the eighties, and Marlys' husband committed suicide. The wound has festered for 30 years, and now Marlys and Cole decide they will assassinate Michaela Bowden, the Democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination, who is aligned with the establishment. Her exit will elevate Minnesota Governor Elmer Henderson, a progressive, into the lead. At least that's how Marlys and Cole envision it. But Henderson senses danger and asks Lucas Davenport, a private citizen now but formerly head of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, to investigate. They agree that, if the threat is real, the most likely venue for an assassination would be the Iowa State Fair, which takes place in advance of the Iowa caucuses. From there, it's an investigatory long march—always detail-rich in Sandford's hands—to the remnants of the progressive farm movement. The latest Prey novel is exciting, politically astute, and ultimately terrifying. Sandford and Davenport are in top form. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-six Prey novels; four Kidd novels; eight Virgil Flowers novels; two YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook; and three other books, most recently Saturn Run.