John Sandford. Ocean Prey. Putnam, 2021.
Back in the eighties when I worked in a Christian bookstore, John Sandford was a popular author. He mostly wrote books with his wife, Paula. Their Transformation of the Inner Man is still considered a classic on inner healing. We also sold books by John Sanford. This John Sandford is not either one. Indeed, most recent editions of the books of the first two Johns are listed as John L. Sandford and John A. Sanford to distinguish them. I am not sure why John Camp chose John Sandford as a pseudonym, but he did.
Now that I have that out of the way, let me share a bit about Ocean Prey. I had heard of Sandford, and I have a friend who likes his work, but this is the first piece I have read by this John Sandford. It is not so much a mystery or crime-solving novel as it is a story of two competing plots. The conflict of the clever plots turns into a million-dollar, life-or-death chess match.
On one side there are the drug importers working off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Even back in the seventies when I was in the Coast Guard, smugglers would sometimes toss their smuggled product overboard in offshore waters. Later, when they would go to get it, they would either pull it up if they set a phony lobster buoy over it, or the more sophisticated ones would send a radio signal that would set off a CO2 cartridge and cause the product to float to the surface.
Apparently smugglers still do something similar. Of course, now with GPS there is no need for a buoy or a marker. If they are handling large amounts of heroin or cocaine in drums or pipes, they hire divers. So on one side we have a group of well-organized criminals with a fairly sophisticated communication plan trying to raise contraband heroin off the Atlantic shoreline of Florida.
When their behavior in a boat arouses suspicion, they are followed into port by a Coast Guard boat. Before they can be boarded, they shoot and kill the three crewmen of the Coast Guard boat. They get away with the drugs, set fire to their boat, and disappear. Little evidence exists other than what one shaken eyewitness saw.
After nearly five months, the FBI is no closer to finding the criminals. Because federal officers, the Coasties, are killed, the FBI are in charge of the case. Our main character, Federal Marshal Lucas Davenport enters with another marshal to see what they can find out. Although there is no “smoking gun” like the Steele Dossier, the FBI come across as showboats in this novel. The marshals do not worry about politics the way the FBI does.
Both sides know or at least expect that there are a lot more pipes of drugs out there. Both sides are waiting for the other side to stand down from their alert. They call them pipes because they are stored in sections of plastic pipe.
There are a few names floating “out there.” Davenport and his associate Bob Matees do some digging, and they get a little too close. Davenport calls on an old friend—apparently the protagonist of other Sandford novels—Virgil Flowers. Flowers is teamed up with a black female marshal and together they act asi if they are street smart stoners. Flowers is a qualified diver, and eventually he is hired to get the rest of the offshore drug cache.
He is quite successful the first time. Everyone seems happy. Flowers gets paid. The FBI and Marshals have a sense of what it going on, and the drugs are on their way to make dealers and importers lots of money.
Still, Lucas and the other law enforcement types want to do more than arrest some lackeys. They want the big guys. We begin to have an idea of who they may be, but they are good at putting several layers between them and the street level and sea level workers. Lucas comes up with a plan.
Both sides’ plans get thwarted to some degree. How it all works out is quite clever. The criminals are pretty ruthless, so there are a number of killings. A few victims are workers who they think squealed. But some are young women whose only offense was dating the wrong guys.
There are a lot of fascinating details about diving. How does one qualify? What about nitrogen narcosis? How deep can someone dive without getting the bends? How do people combat that? At the same time, there is some very sophisticated technology used by both sides. While not exactly Clancy, technodudes and dudesses might enjoy this plot anyhow.
Looking for a clever plot? Looking for justice? Take a look at Ocean Prey.
A couple of notes…
This paperback edition has an excellent afterword by the author. He gives some acknowledgments, but most of it is devoted to the problem with writing accurately, even in fiction. He gives an example of how he had someone read a manuscript of his to check for accuracy. A Minneapolis detective was carrying a Beretta pistol. The expert told him those agents only carry Glocks. So he changed the pistol type. The problem was that in another paragraph he had written that the man released the safety on the pistol. Glocks do not have safeties. Sandford knew that, but forgot to read around the whole passage about the pistol. Writers try, he admits, but they do not always get everything right, even when writing fiction and even when they know what is what. Since everyone uses language, a lot of people assume writing is as easy as talking. Writing well is hard and tricky work.
I note that as of this printing there are thirty-two books in this series by Sandford all with Prey as the last word in the title. All I could think of was that he could not have called this novel Ocean’s Prey, or readers would think it was about the cranberry business. I also thought that if he ever had a novel set in Quebec, he could call it Santander Beau Prey. Of course, it is unlikely that a U.S. Marshal would spend too much time in Canada.