Extreme Prey by John Sanford

Lucas Davenport is enjoying life after a career in law enforcement with the Minnesota BCA.  He is independently wealthy due to a software company he founded then sold in his twenties and his wife is a surgeon.  So he has spent his first summer in retirement at his cabin in the back woods of Wisconsin, fixing it up and adding floor space.  He doesn’t miss the politics or bureaucracy of public life but he does miss chasing the bad guys.  So when the governor of Minnesota calls him and asked for his help, Lucas is on it.

The governor is running for President and is campaigning in Iowa prior to the caucus.  His people pick up at one of his rallies that someone is plotting to kill his competitor, Michaela Bowden.  Ms. Bowden is the presumptive candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination and the governor is running with the idea of landing the VP spot.  So he wants to make sure his potential running mate remains safe.  Lucas is the man for the job.

Lucas heads for Des Moines and starts visiting various radical political groups around Iowa.  They are mostly Vietnam era groups with farm backgrounds wishing the Federal government would stay out of their lives.  But none have taken any action in decades.  Then the head of one of these groups is murdered the evening after Lucas had interviewed him.  Lucas tries to find the other members of the group and keeps stirring the pot.  A gunman is spotted at a Bowden rally in Davenport but he doesn’t fit the profile of the radical group… too young.  Lucas and his Iowa law enforcement comrades decide that Bowden will be most vulnerable at the Iowa State Fair.  Tradition has presidential candidates walking in the open on the fair grounds.  But can they cover Ms. Bowden in the crowds and how many others are at danger in this setting?  Lucas with no official authority has to play nice with the real cops and find the conspirators before it’s too late.

John Sanford has found a way to extend his Lucas Davenport series for at least one more novel.  And why not?  The handsome, neatly dressed, rich guy with the cowboy disposition has all the characteristics of a protagonist to love.  Especially, with his tenacity for chasing the bad guys.  I suspect Sanford will find more creative ways to keep Lucas Davenport in the hunt.  Let’s hope so anyway.