Stuck and Stolen

Last week we looked at two below-standard entries in some long novel series; this week ups the average with a decent entry and one that's another subpar offering.

Unfortunately for fans of Randy Wayne White's Marion "Doc" Ford, Chasing Midnight is not the decent entry. Dead Silence and Night Vision weren't well-received, and although Deep Shadow perked things up a bit, Chasing Midnight is another confused, scattershot adventure that needs at least one more round through the word processor to sort things out.

Retired NSA agent and marine biologist Ford and his eccentric pal, Tomlinson, are at an exclusive holiday weekend staged by a Russian multi-millionaire who wants to show off a development in the breeding of sturgeon -- the fish that produce caviar. Three other wealthy folks who aren't laden with principles are also around, as are some members of an environmental group who crashed the party but with whom Tomlinson has some ties. When Ford tries to scout the area one night, he's set upon by some shadowy gunmen and finds out that someone's knocked out power and communications on the isolated island where the exhibition is being held.

Midnight starts out alternating between flashbacks and real-time action as Ford tries to recall clues that will let him know who's behind a supposed catastrophic event scheduled for midnight. A third of the way in, we switch over to real-time permanently as everything we thought we were learning gets tossed out the window for an entirely different scenario. One or two other setups get tossed into the mix, but "mix" isn't a good word for the whole as they aren't really mixed in with each other at all. Midnight does a bad enough job at telling us who's who and what's what that it's not long before we say, "So what?" and stop chasing it at all, because it's not really going anywhere.

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On the other hand, Stolen Prey, the 22nd "Prey" novel from Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist John Camp (who writes as John Sandford) maintains much of the high quality of this series. Inspector Lucas Davenport -- a fellow with some anger management issues who usually stays just this side of being a rogue cop -- confronts a horrific murder scene when an entire family, including dogs, is found tortured and murdered in a sleepy Minneapolis suburb. Although the crime seems like the kind of warning or revenge murder carried out by drug gangs, there's nothing in the family background that suggests a connection.

But when a possible link is found, then several agencies take up the hunt, and Lucas finds himself dealing not only with the murders but with secretive cyber-criminals operating well below anyone's radar. The trick will be learning what those involved know before they complete their heist, or before the assassins find them.

Camp has a good handle on the kind of wry cynicism that marks a lot of police officers and detectives, and he includes a personal case in which Lucas is very interested that offers some light moments to offset the gruesome kickoff. He avoids doing the "killer's-eye" or "victim's-eye" viewpoint prologue that a lot of thriller writers use, and Stolen Prey is the better for both choices.

A weak ending sets Stolen Prey back in the pack of this series -- the resolution for some of those involved is just unsatisfying to folks who like the way Lucas does things -- but it's by no means the worst and indicates Camp may have a lot left in the tank as he continues to follow Lucas and his cast of chaarcters.