Murder Most Political (Fiction)

Silken Prey
John Sandford
Hard Cover:  416 Pages (We listened to the audio version)
Publisher:  Penguin Audio
Language:  English
ISBN:  1611761662
Copyright:  2013

For John, BLUF:  Good yarn, get the version in CDs, or borrow mine.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Martha and I traveled down to Virginia earlier in the month, for a picnic.  The picnic was for members of "The Warlord Loop" living in or able to get to the Northern Virginia area.  The Warlord Loop?  Yes, a list serve best explained here.

As is normal, we listened to a book on CDs.  Also, as is normal, it was a mystery story by one of Martha's favored authors.  I would have preferred something along the lines of national politics or national security affairs, but marriage is a product of compromise.  The book was Silken Prey, available from Amazon here.

The author, Novelist John Sandford is the pseudonym of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp.  The novel is the 23rd in a series based upon detective Lucas Davenport who rates his own Wikipedia page.  In the series Detective Lucas Davenport is working for the Minneapolis Police Department, but then shifts to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.  Yes, there is such an organization.

This story looks at politics and the underside of same.  Our intrepid detective is invited by the Governor of Minnesota to quietly take a look into the allegation that a Republican candidate for a US Senate Seat was found to have kiddie porn on his personal computer at his campaign headquarters.  The Governor is a Democrat, but he and the Republican incumbent go back to Kindergarten.  And, adding to the mix, the Democratic challenger seems to be a little narcissistic.◊ 

This is a timely book (May 2013) in that we are dealing with a lot of political scandals at this time down in Washington.  I count five, including "Fast and Furious", Secretary of HHS Kathleen Seblius, IRS, AP and some aspects of the Benghazi Imbroglio.  In this case it might even be a throwback to the speculation surrounding the Clinton Administration and the Rose Law Firm.  There is the kiddie porn issue, found on the Candidate's own computer by a young female campaign volunteer.  There is murder.  There is theft and there is how people work out their own special quirks and drives.

Without giving away the ending, some get caught and some don't.  Some die and some don't.  And, as often happens, one wonders who the good guys are at the end of the day.  Forget the question of if good is rewarded and bad punished.

For me the most interesting parts of the story are seeing Lucas Davenport knit together the different strands of the story to come up with a larger whole.  The second thing I like is seeing those who actually have some sense of justice work to see justice done.  Some in somewhat strange ways.

I recommend it.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  As opposed to the Deficit.  The Debt is the totality of what the Federal Government owes to creditors.  The Deficit is the amount the Federal Government overspends in a given fiscal year—Expenditures minus Revenues (Taxes) collected.
♥  Rush’s own words on this issue can be found her.  In essense, Mr Limbaugh didn’t like the policies President Elect Obama had been proposing and Mr Limbaugh thought they were bad for the nation.
♦  Sometimes referred to as "Dead Fish" after he mailed a dead fish to a pollster who was late with the data.
♣  Bomb Power:  The Modern Presidency and the National Security State, which suggests the acqusition of nuclear weapons "dramatically increas[ed] the power of the modern presidency and redefin[ed] the government as a national security state".
◊  In college she was told that she had a narcissistic personality disorder, which she assumed was a good thing.