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. That's headache enough for Lucas Davenport but what's about to hit him is worse. A while back, a stray bullet put pimp and petty thief Randy Whitcomb in a wheel chair, and he's been nursing his grudge into a full head of psychotic steam. He blames Davenport for the...

"In Certain Prey, Davenport confronts an entirely new kind of adversary. Clara Rinker is a southerner, trim, pleasant, attractive - and the best hit woman in the business. She isn't showy, not one of those movie killers; she just goes quietly about her business, collects her money, and goes home."--BOOK JACKET. "It's when she's hired for a job in Minnesota that things become complicated for her. A defense attorney wants a rival eliminated, and that's...

"In southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to a close. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. "Issues" is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether a local reporter should die. And the vote is four to one in favor. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is doing a favor for a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be turning...

Lieutenant Lucas Davenport, highly touted killer detective, invents intricate video games that he sells for cash. Called in to aid the Minneapolis team scrambling to stop a psychopathic serial woman-slayer, Lucas almost meets his match. The self-styled "mad dog" murderer views his rape/stabbings as a game as well, setting up obstacles for the police, carefully selecting his victims, and priding himself on clever moves.

An art history professor, writer and cheerful pervert, James Qatar had a hobby: he took secret photographs of women and turned them into highly sexual drawings. One day, he took the hobby a step further and ... he had to kill one of his models. This is the story of a man whose "hobby" becomes an enjoyable compulsion.

"The night after the fourth of July, Layton Carlson Jr., of Red Wing, Minnesota, finally got lucky. And unlucky. He'd picked the perfect spot to lose his virginity to his girlfriend, an abandoned farmyard in the middle of cornfields: nice, private, and quiet. The only problem was¿something smelled bad♯ðike, really bad. He mentioned it to a county deputy he knew, and when the cop took a look, he found a body stuffed down a cistern. And then another,...

"The first body is of a young woman, found on a Minneapolis riverbank, her throat cut, her body scourged and put on display. Whoever did this, Lucas knows, is pushed by brain chemistry, there is something wrong with him. This isn't a bad love affair." "The second body is found three weeks later, in a farmhouse six miles south. Same condition, same display - except this time it is a man. Nothing to link the two victims, nothing to indicate that the...

"Six months ago, Lucas Davenport tackled his first case as a statewide troubleshooter, and he thought that one was plenty strange enough. But that was before the Russian got killed. On the shore of Lake Superior, a man named Vladimir Oleshev is found shot dead, three holes in his head and heart, and though nobody knows why he was killed, everybody - the local cops, the FBI, and the Russians themselves - has a theory. And when it turns out he had very...

A torn body turns up in the snow at a game reserve, another in a dumpster. A political hot potato of a case lands in the lap of Minneapolis deputy police chief Lucas Davenport, who's none too happy to receive it. Still recovering from near-fatal wounds of his own, trying for once in his life to settle down with one woman, this case is the last thing he needs. And, as it turns out, solving it is nearly the last thing he does.

Virgil's always been known for having a somewhat active, er, social life, but he's probably not going to be getting too many opportunities for that during his new case. While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, he gets a call from Lucas Davenport to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only, a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic...