Cody is introduced to Lucas Davenport and reads a Big Little Marvel book.
RULES OF PREY by John Sandford
Harry Callahan. Marion Cobretti. Martin Riggs. Those are just a few famous characters who fit into the great tradition of writers crafting stories about police characters who are Not Your Average Cop. Author John Sandford contributed to that tradition with his 1989 novel Rules of Prey, which introduced readers to Lucas Davenport, a detective with the Minneapolis Police Department who doesn’t play by the rules – and is wealthy enough to drive around in a Porsche because he has a side gig developing video games. When this book catches up with him, he’s working on a marketable fantasy game (which sounds like it would have the makings of a cool movie adaptation) and a less marketable passion project that allows players to not only re-enact but also manipulate the events of the American Civil War. I have to assume that Sandford himself is a Civil War enthusiast, based on the passages where he has Lucas working on the game and playing it with his gamer group, which includes a nun he has known since childhood.
His friend becoming a nun is the opposite of the path Lucas took, as he’s a bit of a womanizer, sleeping with two women over the course of the book (impregnating one), while fantasizing about another and not being committed to anyone... at least, not until late in the page count.
Fittingly, Sandford pitted his “cop with no rules” character against a serial killer who follows a strict list of rules, which is how we get the title of the book. Some of the rules include: Never kill anyone you know, Never have a motive, Never follow a discernible pattern, Never carry a weapon after it has been used, Isolate yourself from random discovery, and Beware of leaving physical evidence. He lets the authorities know he’s following rules by leaving notes at the scenes of his crimes. Notes that he signs “Maddog.” Like Lucas, Maddog has an eye for women... but Maddog has much worse intentions for them. He evaluates the women he comes across to find which will be the Chosen ones. The ones he’ll murder.
The book tracks how Lucas works to figure out the identity of the Maddog and bring him to justice, using the media to bait the killer along the way by leaking false, insulting information about the killer – but Sandford lets us know the killer’s identity long before Lucas figures it out. Some chapters are told from the perspective of Lucas, while others are told from the perspective of the Maddog. We know who this guy is and how he works, but we need to wait for Lucas to gain that information, and we look forward to the chapter (or chapters) where these two characters are going to collide. Cracking the case doesn’t come easy for Lucas, and there are plenty of ups and downs in the investigation, including a very well written action sequence where an attempt to trap the killer goes disastrously wrong.
Lucas Davenport is an interesting enough character to spend some time reading about, whether he’s working on the case and putting some unorthodox methods to use, interacting with the women in his life, or working on / playing his games. So it’s no surprise that Sandford ended up writing more books about this guy... although it is surprising that he has written over thirty entries in what is now known as “the Prey series.”
THE FANTASTIC FOUR IN THE HOUSE OF HORRORS by William Johnston
From the 1930s into the 1960s, the Whitman Publishing Company put out a series of books aimed at young readers that were called the Big Little Books because they would have a page count in 212 to 432 range, but they were compact; less than 4 inches wide and 4.5 inches high. The page count was also boosted by the fact that there would be a captioned illustration opposite each page of text – so, for example, if a book had 212 pages, 106 of those pages would be illustrations. In 1968, Whitman Publishing and author William Johnston teamed with Marvel Comics to put out a Big Little Book called The Fantastic Four in the House of Horrors, which sent the popular team of Marvel heroes on a roughly 250 page (or 125, not counting the illustrations) adventure.
This was aimed at very young readers, so Johnston doesn’t waste any time. On the first page, the Fantastic Four – consisting of Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards), a scientific genius who can stretch his body into all sorts of shapes and sizes; the Invisible Woman (Sue Storm), who can, as her nickname gives away, become invisible, and also create invisible force fields; the Human Torch (Johnny Storm), Sue's brother, who can cover his body with flames, throw fire, and fly; and the Thing (Ben Grimm), who is extremely strong and has a body made of rock – are hanging out in their headquarters when a tombstone appears out of midair with a challenge inscribed on it, summoning them to a supposedly haunted mansion on the edge of town, the House of Horrors, where they are to face off with a villain called Dr. Weird. Any readers are already expected to know all about the Fantastic Four and their back story, as there is no explanation for how they gained their powers and decided to become heroes.
Up for the challenge, the Fantastic Four head over to the House of Horrors and, at first, decide to split up to search for Dr. Weird. That allows the villain, who is described as being “part magician, part scientist” and has incredible shape-shifting abilities, to take them on one-by-one at first. Using his powers to make it seem like the mansion truly is haunted, he has the heroes deal with things like a pit of crocodiles, a fireplace that transforms into a fire-breathing dragon, a beaded curtain that turns into a bunch of snakes, an avalanche of boulders, and a tea kettle that transforms into an “evil-eyed” tiger. All, or at least most, of these things are really Dr. Weird himself, changing himself into different items and creatures. In his own form, he’s got the usual villain get-up of knee-high boots and a cape – and he also carries a cane / wand that fires a magic spell that causes things to disappear from existence.
After they’ve all encountered Dr. Weird on their own, the Fantastic Four join forces to take him down together and continue having to deal with his shape-shifting. There’s a sequence where a missile transforms into a giant spider that then transforms into a trampoline. Dr. Weird is quite skilled.
The Fantastic Four in the House of Horrors is a quick and fun read that I’m sure a lot of kids had a blast with in 1968.
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