At the moment, I am so caught up in Ruth Reichl’s book, The Paris Novel, that I hadn’t looked at my blog all day until after 8 PM. I’m loving this book! Some of you have already read it, but I’ll review it on Monday.

In the meantime, I’m sneaking in one of Kevin Tipple’s reviews. Although I had already reviewed John Sandford’s Toxic Prey, Kevin is right. We review books differently. So, I’m sharing his review here. Thank you, Kevin.

The fate of the world and most of its inhabitants is the subject of Toxic Prey: A Lucas and Letty
Novel by John Sandford. Dr. Lionel Scott has a vision to save a planet besieged by global
warming and human overpopulation. Kill a lot of people. Create a new pandemic far more lethal
and wider ranging than Covid. Kill billions of people to stop the strain on the world and possibly
reverse the coming collapse.

Letty Davenport is sent to England by her boss, Senator Christopher Colles. Officially, she works
for the Department of Homeland Security, but the reality is that she is sort of a fixer type for
Colles. She is sent to England to talk to three of Lionel Scott’s friends and find out what they
know about Scott and if they know where he is.

There is a concern as the good doc previously worked at U.S. Army Medical Research Institute
of Infectious Diseases and was currently working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico. Scott is an infectious disease specialist and has a lot of knowledge in his head. That
knowledge could be dangerous if used by others.

Met by Alec Hawkins of MI5, Letty is shown Oxford, and A few other things. It soon becomes
clear that Lionel Scott has a history of depression and a fascination with the possibilities of the
Gaia hypothesis.

Simplifying greatly, the theory is that the Earth is a living organism and all life on Earth live in a
sort of harmony and are protected by the Earth. That balance has been destroyed by human
overpopulation. If you remove billions of humans from the planet, the survivors would live in a
world that would steadily improve as nature healed itself. Climate change would immediately
stop and would probably reverse. Species and plants would rebound, improving the quality of
life for the humans that remained. Those humans would have improved access to housing,
resources, etc.

It becomes clear to Letty that Scott might be trying to make that event happen by way of a virus.
He has the medical skills to engineer one. He probably has folks with him that believe in the
same mission. She knows she needs help and starts raising the alarm.

Before long, Lucas Davenport, Letty, Hawkins, and many others are in New Mexico on Scott’s
trail and trying to stop the end of the world before it starts.

A top-notch thriller that offers an all too real scenario, Toxic Prey is a mighty good read. Intense,
often violent, it carries readers along at a rapid pace as Lucas, Letty, and others do everything
they can to stop a group of people committed to wiping out the vast majority of the human
population. Toxic Prey is not only a mighty good read, it is also a scary predicator of what could
be done by one man with knowledge and resources easily bought online.

My digital ARC came by way of the publisher, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, through NetGalley with no
expectation of a review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2024