The Barnes & Noble Review
May 1997
Since John Sandford first captured the attention of millions of readers with his 1989 debut, Rules of Prey, he has written eight books in the bestselling Prey series, featuring Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport. With each novel in the series, Sandford has proven himself a master of suspense, and his ability to combine rich human drama with edge-of-the-seat suspense has earned him widespread critical acclaim and an ever-growing audience.
Now Sandford presents his fans with a remarkable new heroine in an extraordinary new thriller, The Night Crew. A departure from the Prey series, The Night Crew boasts a whole new cast of characters — and a brand-new level of suspense.
Anna Batory runs the night crew. Small, dark-haired, shy but tough, a Wisconsin farm girl on the streets of Los Angeles, she roams the city with her small band of video freelancers in their truck from ten to dawn, looking for news — accidents, robberies, murders, demonstrations — anything they can shoot and sell to the local stations or the networks. It's an exhilarating life...until two deaths hit Anna close to home.
One night, when Anna's crew is filming a suicide jumper who falls five stories to his death, Jason, her fill-in cameraman, is strangely affected. The next morning, Jason is found murdered on a beach. At first the police think that the deaths are unrelated, but too many coincidences and clues keep linking the deaths and leading back to Anna, revealing the dark truth of an obsessed madman. Through a series of bizarre and harrowing events, ghostsofAnna's past are stirred up and revealed to be intrinsically linked to the lives of Jason and the suicide jumper. Anna's world becomes as cold and dangerous as the night itself.
John Sandford has written thrilling stories before, but nothing to top the extraordinary suspense and tension of The Night Crew. It is an intense ride, and it is Sandford's most chilling novel yet.
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Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Anna Batory, thin and "rail-hard" with "pale blue killer eyes," runs a small, independent TV-news night crew that peddles clips of crime scenes, fires, car crashes and other mayhem to local TV stations for a tidy profit. As always with Sandford ("Sudden Prey"), the novel opens on action, in this case the crew's taping of a lab break-in by animal-rights activists and of a drug-crazed teenager's jump from a hotel window. The crew moves from voyeurs of the action to unwilling participants when Anna's part-time cameraman is shot dead and mutilated and a friend of his is murdered in an equally grisly manner. It becomes increasingly clear that a psycho is stalking Anna and her crew. To nail him, she teams up with the divorced father of the jumper, lawyer and ex-cop Jake Harper. Anna, Jake and another crew member and his new girlfriend are all attacked by the psycho before the gory finale. The shift from his usual Minneapolis setting to L.A. brings out the noir in Sandford ("the real dawn, a great, unhappy light, like an old piece of newspaper being pushed over the mountains"), and the action and suspense are up to his usual high standard. But Anna is neither as appealing nor as complex as his customary hero, Lucas Davenport, and other characters also seem grey at times, their movements perfunctory. One can't blame Sandford for wanting to try something new after eight "Prey" novels since 1989 ("Sudden Prey", etc.), plus two thrillers under his real name, John Camp, but let's hope we haven't seen the last of Lucas. BOMC main selection
Library Journal
Sandford takes a break from his popular "Prey" series (e.g., Sudden Prey, LJ 4/1/96) with this tale about a freelance video crew that cruises the Los Angeles night in search of newsworthy mayhem.
From the Publisher
Praise for The Night Crew
“This is riveting, intense crime fiction...lean and mean...replete with bursts of black prose that zap the reader like quick video cuts.”—Cedar Rapids Gazette
“A terrifying chase that doesn't relent until the final page.”—St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Sandford’s machine-gun style and his stylish new heroine make The Night Crew an experience worth repeating.”—Orlando Sentinel
“Exceptional...gritty...compelling.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
JUN/JUL 98 - AudioFile
Richard Ferrone is a regular reader of John Sandford books for Recorded Books. And he is a perfect fit for Sandford’s raw thrillers. But The Night Crew is a bit different, with a female lead and male supporting characters. Rather than altering his normally gritty voice dramatically, Ferrone simply softens his presentation to match Anna Batorys’s determined nature while leaving no doubt about the feminine side of this woman who is being stalked by a ruthless killer. His seamless delivery lets the listener flow freely with the twists and turns of this complex plot. Sandford and Ferrone make a great team. T.J.M. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine
