Cover image of "Revenge Prey," which involves a Russian hit team

Leonard Summers; his wife, Martha; and son, Bernard, are moving into a remote cabin in Minnesota. But his name isn’t Leonard Summers. It’s Leonid Sokolov. And “he was in some kind of enforcement branch of the Russian spy agency,” Lucas Davenport explains to fellow US Marshal Shelly White. “He’s probably killed more people than the Marshals Service.” Lucas and Shelly are out in the cold, on an assignment to protect Sokolov and his family from a Russian hit team. But as John Sandford’s novel, Revenge Prey, gets underway, the Marshals are on the defensive. A shot from a high-powered rifle shatters the glass and kills Masha Sokolov, leaving Leonid and Bernie devastated. It’s a grim beginning to a long-running cat-and-mouse game between the Marshals Service and the Russian GRU.

A mole threatens the Marshals’ investigation

The problem is, no matter what steps they take to move Leonid and Bernie to safety, the GRU is already there. Clearly, there’s a mole in their operation. And as is always the case when an agency suspects a traitor is in place, suspicion reigns throughout. If anyone can be the mole, then everyone is a suspect. And the effort to identify the mole will preoccupy Lucas, Shelly, and their colleagues for a long time. Meanwhile, Lucas’ habit of antagonizing his superiors causes new problems. The man in charge of the Marshals in the region makes his life more difficult at every turn.

Revenge Prey (Lucas Davenport #36) by John Sandford (2026) 389 pages ★★★★★

Photo of a cabin in the MInnesota woods like the one where a Russian hit team strikes
A cabin in the woods in Minnesota similar to the safe house for the Sokolov family. Image: shireinthewoods.com

What’s happening here

Revenge Prey is the 36th installment in John Sandford’s long-running Prey series featuring Lucas Davenport. In this story, Lucas returns to his familiar Minnesota setting. There, teamed with US Marshal Shelly White, he’s on a protection detail for the Sokolov family. After spending the past year holed up in a CIA facility near Washington, the family is moving into Witness Protection. And they’re in Minnesota because their new home resembles their old dacha outside Moscow. But the family isn’t in the safe house for half an hour before a sniper strikes. Davenport springs into the novel’s first shootout as he engages a Russian hit squad. It’s clear he’s wounded either one of the two on the sniper team or their getaway driver. There will be many exchanges of gunfire to follow.

From the outset, we meet the three-person hit team. Abramova, Nikitin, and Orlov are specialists in assassinations in hostile territory. The woman, Abramova, is the on-site director and designated driver. She possesses superb skills behind a steering wheel. Orlov specializes in reconnaissance, street work, and backup. Nikitin, the sniper, is the designated hitter. And they’re on a mission they can’t fail. Because Sokolov “was one of Vladimir Putin’s appointments, so it’s personal.”

Although Davenport and White are pulled off the case in favor of the FBI, Lucas teams up with John Sherwood, a CIA agent, to keep digging. The FBI is running the case now. But he’s convinced the bureaucratic FBI approach won’t catch professional killers. The hunt forces Lucas to figure out which agency leaked the family’s location before the hit team can finish the job.

Familiar series figures make appearances, including Davenport’s wife Weather, his adopted daughter Letty (now a Homeland Security agent), and former partner Virgil Flowers. Reviews have been mixed — some praising the relentless pace, others feeling the 36th entry shows signs of formula fatigue. But I disagree. I loved the book.

About the author

Photo of John Sandford, author of this novel about a Russian hit team
John Sandford. Image: The Real Book Spy

John Roswell Camp, known under his pen name as John Sandford, is a novelist, former journalist, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. To date, he has written 36 novels in the Prey series featuring Lucas Davenport and 12 in the Virgil Flowers series as well as numerous other books. He ws born in Iowa in 1944 and attended the University of Iowa, ending with a bachelor’s degree in American history and literature and a master’s in journalism before embaring on a career as a reporter. His career as a novelist began in 1989, when he published two novels, including the first Prey book..

I’ve reviewed a great many of the Lucas Davenport novels in Sandford’s longest-running series. The most recent are Masked Prey – Prey #30 (John Sandford’s millionaire investigator takes on the alt-right) and Righteous Prey – Prey #32 (Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers battle a murder conspiracy). You can find all the others by typing Sandford’s name in the search box at the top of the Home Page.

I’ve also reviewed all the books about Davenport’s most enterprising agent at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at John Sandford’s excellent Virgil Flowers novels as well as the first two novels in a new series featuring Lucas Davenport’s daughter: The Investigator – Letty Davenport #1 (Taking down a sinister Right-Wing militia) and Dark Angel – Letty Davenport #2 (John Sandford’s badass young detective takes on dangerous hackers).

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And you can always find the most popular of my 2,400 reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.