Extreme Prey

I’m a big fan of “police procedurals.”  Those are crime novels in which dogged police work solves the mystery, as opposed to the kind of cerebral activity you find in Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie.

John Sandford is one of my favorite authors.  His novels feature Lucas Davenport, a Minnesota cop who works for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, or BCA.  Davenport is intelligent with flashes of brilliant insight.

The most recent book in the series is Extreme Prey, copyrighted in 2016.  I haven’t finished it yet, but a political fanatic is plotting the assassination of a female candidate for the presidency.  Davenport is privy to a number of emails sent by the fanatic, and he gives them to Elle, a nun who is also a childhood friend and a psychologist, for her analysis.

Elle tells Davenport he should take the threat very seriously, since the woman appears consumed by hatred.  Then Elle says something that I had not thought about before.  She notes that in the 60s and 70s the country was torn apart by the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-war Movement, and the Feminist Movement, but all of those protests and all of that activity was driven by optimism.  The people creating the ruckus were all hopeful.

Elle then says to Davenport that the current anger and protest comes from a completely different place.  It is driven not by hope, but by hatred.