Anna Batory's evening starts with a frenzied animal rights raid and then moves quickly to the site of a suicide jump. It's all in a normal night's work for Anna, who leads the Night Crew, a freelance video team out to make a quick buck on sensational footage they can sell to L.A. news stations. But this night is different: the jumper is a teenager named Jacob Harper, and Anna's cameraman Jason beats a strangely hasty exit after filming the jump. A few hours later, Jason too is dead: shot and knifed. Jacob Harper's father is an attractive former cop who works out the connection between his son's death and Jason's. The two young men share a drug dealer--and when Harper finds said dealer dead as well, he calls Anna to the scene and shows her a creepy knife wound on the dealer's body: the name "Anna" carved into his chest. From that moment on, Anna knows she's chasing down a killer who's got a thing for her--but who is it? A series of heart-thumping encounters between Anna and her shadowy stalker keep this thriller moving at the dizzying clip that Sandford's fans expect.
Those who love the Prey series for the quirks and contradictions of its antihero, Lucas Davenport, will find a kindred creation in Anna: an attractive loner, taciturn and tough-minded, a classical pianist with the fighting reflexes of a wild animal. Will Sandford keep bringing her back? Time will tell. --Barrie Trinkle
Anna Batory is a smart, tough, ambitious video freelanceer whose nightlife consists of riding the mean streets of L.A. with her motley crew of cameramen, looking for hot stories she can tape and sell to the TV station offering the highest bid. One eventful night, she and her crew tape a raid by animal-rights activists, then hurry to the scene of a suicide, where a high-school kid has just jumped off a balcony after a drug overdose. The next morning, one of Anna's crew members turns up dead, sliced, diced, and beaten to a pulp by an obvious madman. Anna hooks up with the dead high-school kid's dad, Jake Harper, a former L.A. cop who wants to avenge his son's death. He and Anna soon find puzzling links between young Harper's death and the death of Anna's crewman. The tension spirals higher as Jake and Anna track down clues, circling ever closer to the killer. Well-orchestrated suspense, nonstop action, plenty of unexpected twists, and a superb climax will keep readers riveted. Sandford, whose Prey series has been a huge commercial success, offers up a feisty new heroine and plenty of human interest in this slick, sleek, nightmarish thriller. Emily Melton
From Kirkus Reviews
The pseudonymous Sandford takes a break from his popular series featuring top Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport (Sudden Prey, 1996, etc.) to offer a thriller whose gutsy heroine pursues the psychopath who's stalking her around the Los Angeles Basin. A midwestern farm girl whose musical talents proved insufficient to gain her a concert pianist's career, Anna Hatory (now nearing 40) works at an unusual trade. With partner Creek (a gentle giant who did time for running marijuana from Mexico), she heads a television camera crew that prowls L.A. County from midnight until dawn on the lookout for airworthy stories that can be sold to local stations or the networks. Soon after an eventful evening--the freelancers provided exclusive film coverage of the dramatic death of a teenager who jumped from a hotel ledge while high on speed--the body of Jason O'Brien, a part-time videocam operator for Anna who filmed the suicide, washes up on the Santa Monica beach. Anna meets Jake Harper, an ex-sheriff's deputy turned lawyer and the father of the boy who committed suicide. He believes that there's a connection between the deaths of Jason and his son and that Anna may be in danger. After her home is broken into and Creek badly wounded by a pistol-wielding assailant, she joins forces with Jake. Desperate to make a connection that could lead them to her anonymous pursuer, Anna (by now romantically involved with Jake) wonders whether her lost love, a composer who's back on the West Coast courtesy of a UCLA fellowship, might be the guilty party. Instead, a violent climactic confrontation that costs Anna dearly reveals that her manic nemesis is not from the daydreamy past but the nightside present. A credibly gallant woman on the trail of a notably demented weirdo in a host of after-hours venues--a winning and suspense- filled combination for the ultraprofessional Sandford. (Book-of- the-Month Club main selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Praise for The Night Crew
“This is riveting, intense crime fiction...lean and mean...replete with bursts of black prose that zap the reader like quick video cuts.”—Cedar Rapids Gazette
“A terrifying chase that doesn't relent until the final page.”—St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Sandford’s machine-gun style and his stylish new heroine make The Night Crew an experience worth repeating.”—Orlando Sentinel
“Exceptional...gritty...compelling.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
About the Author
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of the Prey novels, the Kidd novels, the Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels co-authored with his wife Michele Cook.
This conventional thriller, written in cinematic style, concerns the female head of an independent news video crew whose quest for a murderer takes her through some of the more dangerous and sordid L.A. back alleys. A normally compelling and likeable actor, Sanders is admirably tough; his impersonations are particularly good, especially that of the heroine. But he ignores the author's manipulation of mood and tempo. At times he's puzzlingly laconic, thus dissipating tension. The law of diminishing returns defeats him way before the last side. The listener is finished with the story before he finishes telling it. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
