“Somewhere along the line, it occurred to him that he hadn’t spoken to Virgil Flowers. He’d probably taken the day off, and knowing Flowers, he’d done it in a boat. The thing about Flowers was, in Lucas’s humble opinion, you could send him out for a loaf of bread and he’d find an illegal bread cartel smuggling in heroin-saturated wheat from Afghanistan. Either that, or he’s be fishing in a muskie tournament, on government time. You had to keep an eye on him.”

This is the first John Sandford book I’ve read in a couple of years. Much though I love Virgil Flowers as a character, his spin-off series didn’t quite catch fire for me, and I felt that the Prey series had gone off the boil. Stolen Prey, however, is Sandford back on good form. A nice, tight thriller, with some excellent character touches.