Publisher, Penguin Audio (May 2009)

Listen to a FREE audio clip.

Danger stalks Lucas Davenport at work and all too close to home, in the superlative new thriller by the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.

For twenty years, John Sandford's novels have been beloved for their "ingenious plots, vivid characters, crisp dialogue and endless surprises" (The Washington Post), and nowhere are those more in evidence than in the sudden twists and shocks of Wicked Prey.

The Republicans are coming to St. Paul for their convention. Throwing a big party is supposed to be fun, but crashing the party are a few hard cases the police would rather stayed away. Chief among them is a crew of professional stickup men who've spotted several lucrative opportunities, ranging from political moneymen with briefcases full of cash to that armored-car warehouse with the weakness in its security system. All that's headache enough for Lucas Davenport-but what's about to hit him is even worse.

A while back, a stray bullet put a pimp and petty thief named Randy Whitcomb in a wheelchair, and, ever since, the man has been nursing his grudge into a full head of psychotic steam. He blames Davenport for the bullet, but it's no fun just shooting him. That wouldn't be painful enough. Not when Davenport has a pretty fourteen-year-old adopted daughter that Whitcomb can target instead. . . .

And then there's the young man with the .50 caliber sniper rifle and the right- wing-crazy background, roaming through a city filled with the most powerful politicians on earth. . . . Rich with his brilliant trademark suspense and some of the best characters in suspense fiction, Wicked Prey is further proof that "Sandford is one of the most consistently entertaining crime writers working today" (Booklist).

About the Author: "Like the best writers in this genre—Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain among them—John Sandford evokes his netherworld with authentic dialogue and meticulous details." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

John Sandford is the pseudonym of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. Camp was born in 1944 and was raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He received his B.A. in American Studies from the University of Iowa, and received his first training as a journalist and reporter when he was in Korea for 15 months working for his base paper.

After the army, Camp spent 10 months working for the Cape Girardeau Se Missourian newspaper before returning to the University of Iowa for his Masters in Journalism. From 1971 to 1978, he worked as a general assignment reporter for the Miami Herald, covering killings and drug cases, among other beats, with his colleague, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edna Buchanan.

In 1978, Camp joined the St. Paul Pioneer Press as a features reporter. He became a daily columnist at the newspaper in 1980. In the same year, he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for an article he wrote on the Native American communities in Minnesota and North Dakota and their modern day social problems. In 1986, Camp won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for a series of articles on the farm crisis in the Midwest.

Camp has written fourteen books in the bestselling "Prey" series under the name John Sandford. The titles in this series, which features Lucas Davenport, include Rules of Prey, Shadow Prey, Eyes of Prey, Silent Prey, Winter Prey, Night Prey, Mind Prey, Sudden Prey, Secret Prey, Certain Prey, Easy Prey, Chosen Prey, Naked Prey, and now Broken Prey.

With the "Prey" series, Sandford has displayed a brilliance of characterization and pace that has earned him wide praise and made the books national bestsellers. He has been hailed as a "born storyteller" (San Diego Tribune), his work as "the kind of trimmed-to-the-bone thriller you can't put down" (Chicago Tribune), and Davenport as "one of the most engaging (and iconoclastic) characters in contemporary fiction." (Detroit News)