Dead Watch

Pentagon investigator Jake Winter is both a writer and special forces vet. He's been wounded in action and walks with a stick and a limp. The stick comes in handy in difficult situations and Jake knows how to use it. Winter has been tasked to investigate the murder of former Republican Senator Lincoln Bowe, whose headless body was found in the Virginia woods. It seems Bowe and Populist Democratic Governor Arlo Goodman were not the best of friends. Goodman has formed an organization called the Watchmen, which isn't as fascist as the Brown Shirts, but it's close. Winter's problem is, did the Watchmen kill the former senator or was it somebody else trying to make it look like they did? It tunes out that Bowe was in the closet, which if your sexual preferences lean that way, is probably a good idea if you're a Republican senator, as coming out won't get you too many votes from the party's base. He also left behind a good looking widow, who Jake can't help falling for. And in addition to the widow, Bowe left behind some pretty unscrupulous pals Jake has to watch out for. Plus there is a secret dossier everybody's looking for which supposedly proves the Vice President is corrupt. Some want to use the info to damage the Democratic President while others want to get the dossier to protect him. The tension, as everybody tries to get what they want, is literally spine-tingling. As usual, John Sandford has penned a book that is impossible to put down. He's taken a break from his Prey series in this book that damns all politicians as venal and I have to say, I agree with him. They are all a bunch crooks, but that notwithstanding, Jake Winter is a super character and I hope Mr. Sandford brings him back. Maybe he could alternate the Lucas Davenport books with Jake Winter books. That would be all right with me.

As all of his books, this was a very suspenseful novel. The characters seemed so real of course I have every Stanford novel he has written and waiting for a new one. Hope it is soon

With "Dead Watch", Sanford has delivered a political thriller that is fully worthy of mention alongside his popular police-procedural Prey series. I share the Booklist reviewer's sentiment that Sandford has produced a D.C. intrigue reminiscent of Ross Thomas (a VERY good thing!). My biggest beef with Dead Watch is the bland characterization of Jake Winter (though Sandford does do a good job of making Winter not be Lucas Davenport); nearly every other character has more personality-pizzazz. Not to worry though, the Madison Bowe character and the breakneck speed of the story more than make up for that shortcoming. If I'd been turning pages any faster, I'd have probably started a fire.

John Sandford is an author whose work I have come to enjoy so much that I automatically purchase any novel which he writes without waiting for reviews or soliciting the opinions of readers whose tastes parallel mine. I have read the entire KIDD series and all of the recent novels in the Lucas Davenport PREY series plus some of the early entries. In all cases have I enjoyed the plots, the character development and his writing style. Nevertheless, the most recent entries in those two series (explicitly so in the case of THE HANGED MAN'S SONG and implicitly in BROKEN PREY), contained indications that either the author had decided that it was time to move the series in a somewhat new direction or that he was tiring of the characters even if his fans were not. Thus, I anxiously awaited the publication of DEAD WATCH with the knowledge that it would introduce me to new characters created by one of my favorite authors. What I did not anticipate was that it would be written in a style distinctively different from the author's other works that I had read. While Sandford's other books certainly contain some elements that would allow the thriller label to be applied to them, it seems to me that they (particularly the PREY series) could more correctly be described as action oriented police (detective) procedurals. DEAD WATCH reverses the style emphasis of all those works. It belongs clearly in the thriller genre. It is filled with incredibly fast paced action; a very compressed time frame; sufficient character definition to make the story credible but domination of the novel by the plot and the action. The convoluted, improbable, conspiracy-laced, interesting storylines overwhelm the elements of crime procedural introduced by the fact that Jake Winter (the central character) is perhaps best described as a specialist in "forensic bureaucracy", a clever conception which takes the idea of a troubleshooter to a whole new level of specialization and alone might have been worth the time it took to complete this fast and absorbing read. As the book opens we meet Madison Bowe, whose husband (former Senator Lincoln Bowe) has recently disappeared under very strange circumstances. She immediately receives a visit by two members of The Watchmen, a volunteer group with strong ties to Virginia governor Arlo Goodman, the political opponent and personal nemesis of Linc Bowe. A heated confrontation occurs which results in a political firestorm and potentially threatens to have national political consequences during the upcoming presidential election. Thus, Jake Winter, retired from the Army after being severely wounded in Afghanistan and now an occasional consultant to presidential Chief of Staff Bill Danzig, is summoned to the White House and requested to use whatever resources are necessary including his FBI contacts to attempt to locate Linc Bowe. He is soon jousting with Maddy Bowe, who is completely convinced that The Watchmen and Goodman are involved and that in all l

Like some other readers, I really enjoy the Prey novels, and so I wasn't sure whether I'd like this one. As it turned out, I thought this book was extraordinary. All the characters have sharply-drawn but conflicting motivations. That allows Sandford to provide remarkably interesting insights not only into politics but also about how humans struggle against each other. The main characters are very appealing, the plot structured very cleverly, and the writing, well this is John Sandford so the writing is constantly compelling. I hope this book is the start of a new series for the author.