Toxic Prey, John Sandford
Toxic Prey, John Sandford
44 Rating(s)
List: $22.50 | Sale: $15.75
Club: $11.25

Toxic Prey

Bestseller

Author: John Sandford

Narrator: Robert Petkoff

Unabridged: 11 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 04/09/2024


Synopsis

Lucas Davenport and his daughter, Letty, team up to track down a dangerous scientist whose latest project could endanger the entire world, in this latest thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author John Sandford.

Gaia is dying.

That, at least, is what Dr. Lionel Scott believes. A renowned expert in tropical and infectious diseases, Scott has witnessed the devastating impact of illness and turmoil at critical scale. Society as it exists is untenable, and the direct link to Earth’s death spiral; population levels are out of control and people have allowed disarray and disorder to run rampant. While most are concerned about deadly disease, Scott knows that it is truly humanity itself that will destroy Gaia. It’s only by removing the threat that the planet can continue to prosper, and luckily, Scott is just the right man for the job…

When Scott then disappears without a trace, Letty Davenport is tasked with tracking down any and all leads. Scott’s connections to sensitive research into virus and pathogen spread has multiple national and international organizations on high alert, and his shockingly high clearance levels at various institutions, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, make him the last person they’d like to go missing. As the web around Scott becomes more tangled, Letty calls in her father, Lucas, help her lead a group of specialists to find Scott as soon as possible. But as Letty and Lucas begin to uncover startling and disturbing connections between Scott and Gaia conspiracists, their worst fears are confirmed, and it quickly becomes a race to find him before the virus he created becomes the perfect weapon.

About John Sandford

American author, John Sanford (a pseudonym of John Roswell Camp) wrote thirty-five novels, all of which are on the New York Times bestsellers list in one way or another. He was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1944, where he spent much of his time with his Lithuanian grandparents. Their home was very primitive with an outside outhouse and a subsistence garden. Life was work centered on the farm with hay being bailed each summer to feed the various farm animals. Fruit trees were also in abundance on their property. It was a good place to grow up.

Camp won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, and also won the Distinguished Writing Award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He also wrote two non-fiction books. The Eye and the Heart: The Water Colors of John Stuart Ingle, and Plastic Surgery: The Kindest Cut.

Camp was married to Susan Lee Jones, and has two children. Susan died in May 2007 of metastasized breast cancer, and he married again in 2013 to Michele Cook, a journalist and screenwriter. Camp is a dedicated painter and photographer also. He, however, does not show his paintings.

Camp's most prolific work is the Prey series of which there are currently twenty-five installments, running from 1989 - 2015.......the first being Rules of Prey and the most recent, Gathering Prey, which debuted on April 28, 2015. Other series include The Kidd Series, The Virgil Flowers Series, The Singular Menace Series, and other various books and short stories.


Reviews

Goodreads review by LIsa Noell "Rocking the chutzpah!" on March 24, 2024

My thanks to Putnam Group, John Sandford and Netgalley. I love the characters. I've finally developed a soft spot for Letty, and if course Lucas is my main man! But, I hated the whole entire plot. Everything about it just was very bland. I know it was supposed to be scary, but? Also, I've always been......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on December 17, 2024

According to the Gaia hypothesis, the Earth is a living organism with the overall thrust of life being cooperative. Life on Earth self-regulates its environment to create optimum conditions for the advancement of life. The correct balance is held in place, perhaps cruelly, through population limitin......more

Goodreads review by OutlawPoet on January 22, 2024

Okay, let me get my nitpick out of the way first. And it is a teeny nitpick – not a star destroying complaint. Ready? Okay… I miss Virgil (expletive-ing) Flowers. I want Virgil. Not a Virgil reference. Not an ‘as Virgil Flowers would say’. The books need Virgil. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the wa......more

Goodreads review by Sheyla ✎ on March 02, 2025

Could happen! Dr. Lionel Scott has a radical belief: Gaia, our planet, is dying, and the only way to save it is through a drastic reduction in the human population. His method? A deadly virus, spread rapidly among unsuspecting victims. When Dr. Scott vanishes and the threat of a new epidemic looms lar......more

Goodreads review by CoachJim on June 24, 2024

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic. John Sanford, Toxic Prey (Page 9) This is a seriously scary story. With memories our recent pandemic still fresh we have a story about a scientist trying to start another pandemic. He is a follower of Gaia, a cult that worships t......more


Quotes

One of Library Journal’s Stars of 2024

"A believable, timely, edge-of-one’s-seat thriller involving climate change and a virus. Whenever Letty Davenport is involved (as in previous outing Dark Angel), it’s disaster on a grand scale.” —Library Journal (starred review)
 
"John Sandford delivers yet another unputdownable reading experience in Toxic Prey, a gripping thriller that combines nail-biting suspense with thought-provoking commentary on the intersection of science, morality, and environmentalism. Longtime fans of the Lucas Davenport series will devour this one.” —The Real Book Spy