Phantom Prey by John Sandford

 

Lucas Davenport is bored and a little depressed.  He is often depressed at the end of the winter in Minnesota.  He knows he needs a good case, one that's out of the ordinary to kickstart his brain and get him moving.  When his wife Weather asks him to speak to a friend of hers whose daughter has been missing for several months, he is reluctant but finally decides to.  Other than that, he's on a detail that is staking out the apartment of the wife of a fugitive and waiting for him to sneak home to see her. 

When Lucas goes to see Alyssa, Weather's friend, his interest is piqued.  At the time of her daughter's disappearance, Alyssa had been a recent widow, her husband having been killed in a small plane crash.  She and her daughter, who had recently graduated from college had a strained relationship as the daughter was upset that Alyssa's marriage had been strained at the time of her father's death.  Alyssa came home one day to find blood and signs of a cleanup.  She hadn't been expecting her daughter that day, as she had her own place, but the blood tested out to be her blood and she hadn't been seen since.  Was she dead?  If not, where was she?

Frances, the daughter, had been flirting with the Goth lifestyle for a couple of years.  Her friends wore black, listened to Goth music and were serious about it to varying degrees.  Frances was about through with it as she had too much business background from her parents to be happy not producing something but it was a slow removal.  When other individuals in the Goth life who knew Frances started to be murdered, Lucas knew it was all related somehow.  He discovered fifty thousand missing from Frances' accounts and now he maybe had a motive.  Can he find the killer before more people are murdered?

This is the eighteenth novel in the Prey series.  Lucas is his same self, a magnet to women who he faithfully turns away as he is a family man these days.  His ability to handle multiple investigations, his relationships with his men, and his ability to shake up a stalled investigation are some of the qualities that keep readers coming back to read more about his exploits.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.