I haven’t read all of the Prey books. I do like the characters, Flowers and Davenport and as one reviewer noted, there is less “gratuitous sex”, which is fine with me. But in my opinion, this book is seriously flawed. It left me with unanswered questions. Why the heck did Hess kill Sand and the two boys? It was never revealed that he had molested either boy, never ascertained that one of the boys knew he was a, what was the word Sanford used, “paederast”? (I always feel indebted when an author increases my vocabulary, even when it is obviously staged.) Why was Maggie, or “Cooper” dead set on murder? Myself, I would be murderous if someone harmed my child, but Sanford led me to believe that Cooper and Ann already had something unlawful going on that they wanted to hide. Why did Sanford usually refer to Chelsea as “the baby”? He inferred that Cooper and Ann didn’t understand much about comforting “the baby”. Why? Cooper had 2 older boys. I expected something devious to be revealed about the child’s parentage. The link between the Sand murders and Heath…. was, boringly, a weak link. Actually, Heath may have been the most interesting character! This book reminds me of my complaint about sequel movies. They’re generally increasingly worse which I believe is because the creators just want to cash in on the money and don’t really care about the quality. That’s how I felt about this book. Was the author’s and publisher’s attitude: It’s going to sell anyway; so what if it leaves people wondering?