This book is about a young woman, Letty, and her counterpart, Kaiser, as they do what they are trained to do, and that is, stop a domestic disaster on the Texas / Mexico border. Lettie is new to this kind of project, but she's sharp and fearless, and not afraid to use her gun. She takes care of business in an impressive manner.

The story is quite complicated, a little too complex, I think, as the two unfold the anticipated event, and then encounter it, head on. There are numerous characters both on the "good side" and the "bad side", and it was challenging to remember exactly who was who in some parts of the book. I wonder if it could have been edited down quite a bit. I did get somewhat bogged down in the middle of the book, before the real action began to happen.

I should say "up front" that I have not read any other John Sandford stories, and I was not familiar with Letty or her dad before reading this book. It might have been nice to have more background on Letty's life before jumping in to The Investigator. Also, I was not really prepared for all the gun "talk", and the use of guns, both in the telling of Lettie's background, and the culminating event of the story.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review The Investigator.

Ideal for fans of Lucas Davenport books. This spinoff follows Letty as she stars in this series. I just lost interest as this was not my type of mystery that I enjoy reading about.

Every now and then you come across a strikingly unique character who allures you into a memorable stay-up-all-night-reading experience. That’s how I feel about Letty Davenport from The Investigator.
A 24-year-old investigator newly instated by The Department of Homeland Security, Letty is offered the job to suss out a series of oil thefts. She teams up with an ex-Army master sergeant, John Kaiser, on the journey down to Texas where she crosses paths with a political group on a mission to drive out immigrants in a brutal display of terror and hostility involving an audacious plan to invade and lock down a small city for a nefarious endgame.
A fun fact about Letty is that she’s a gun enthusiast, which means there’s an abundance of accurate weaponry details and cool shootouts as Letty and John run across dangerous folks with ARs and shotguns, mindful that the story is set in Texas after all.
The story builds upon the current political landscape in logical and genuine manner without picking favorites. The central focus of the narrative lies with its realistic characters on both ends of the good-evil spectrum. Letty personifies the best of the people in this particular situation, cognizant and understanding of the political divides while sticking to her firm belief in rational thinking.
The action takes some time to kick in, but John Sanford keeps the pace fast and furious with relentless sleuthing that leads to constant breaks in the investigation for Letty and John to follow; smart investigating to demonstrate Letty’s mental acumen before showcasing her fierce combative skills.
John Sanford knows how to make quite an impression on the readers as he flickers the mood from light to heavy remarkably well. With a fierce and independent protagonist, and a dark ending that beckons a great continuation of this story, The Investigator is one of 2022’s surprises that you simply must explore. No two ways about it.


Full Review posted with blurb image on: https://www.bestthrillerbooks.com/kashif-hussain/the-investigator-by-john-sanford

In The Investigator, author John Stanford supplements his “Prey” series by featuring Lefty Davenport, the adopted daughter of Lucas Davenport in this new series, and it’s a rollicking five star ride! Letty is working as a researcher for DHS when she’s tasked with investigating a series of crude oil thefts in Texas. The investigation leads to a dangerous militia group, and Letty and her partner, an ex-Delta ranger, are off and running. Thrilling plot, tons of gripping action right from the start, and you’ll absolutely love how Letty’s character is front and center. The ending nicely sets up Letty for another adventure. Don’t miss this one, you won’t be disappointed, absolutely loved it! I received an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Letty Davenport, the young adopted daughter of Lucas Davenport, takes over the investigative reigns in this book and John Sandford doesn’t disappoint.

Letty has seen more action and uncovered more secrets than many law enforcement professionals. Now a recent Stanford graduate with a master’s in economics, she’s restless and bored with her desk job for U.S. Senator Colles. Letty’s ready to quit, but her investigative skills and her willingness to push the legal envelope have impressed Colles.

The senator offers Letty a new job to get her to stay. It's a foot-on-the-ground investigative work in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security. Intrigues, Letty takes the job.

In her first assignment, she is sent to investigate oil theft in Texas. Letty is partnered with a DHS investigator, John Kaiser, and they head to Texas.

When the case quickly turns deadly, they know they’re on the track of something bigger and discovering an explosive that is already been set in motion. Letty and Kaiser race to stop it as the clock is ticking down.

I enjoyed this book, and it’s fun reading about a grown-up Letty kicking butt like her dad, Lucas Davenport. I recommend this book. Even if you’re not familiar with John Sandford’s other books or his bestselling Lucas Davenport Prey series, you’ll be able to jump right and enjoy this page-turning, fast-action book by John Sandford.

Complicated, multi layered female lead - strong intelligent, resourceful and quick witted.

The plot is almost too busy with current events. Guns, immigration, racism, corruption. Not a light hearted read.

HOW DOES HE DO IT???? I have been a fan of Sandford's Lucas Davenport novels for years. Then of the offshoot Virgil Flower's novels. I literally devour the books, setting aside a period of time where I know that I won't be bothered to read each of them. Never disappointed. He's one of the best authors out there today.
AND NOW!!! Sandford has reached inside his bag of tricks and pulled out an entirely new series (at least I hope that it is a series). Introducing Davenport's adopted daughter, Letty Davenport. And what a character! Very intelligent, very complex personality, calculating, quirky, with an underlying dark side. It's the dark side that is so intriguing. Is she just driven, or is she a bit of a sociopath? Or a combination of the two? Time will tell. It's actually exciting to think of the coming possibilities for Letty!
This novel encompasses a plot of oil thefts, anti-immigration, white supremacy, and of course, murder. Very current, very believable.
Well written, good character development, impossible to put down. Wrapped up nicely at the end. But with a cliffhanger that, knowing Sandford, is definitely going to surface in the future.
All around one of my favorite books of the year. You can't miss with this one!

An offshoot new series starring Davenport’s daughter, Letty. She’s smart, tough, resilient and ready to work undercover with her new DHS partner Kaiser. Delighted to have a strong woman protagonist, but the plot not so much. Covering right wing militia, and immigration, it felt too long, too much, but I still look forward to other Letty Davenport novels.

John Sanford has given us the next generation of Davenport novels, and it's a winner. Lucas Davenport's 24-year-old adopted daughter takes center stage. Now a recent Stanford grad with a master’s in economics, she’s restless and bored in a desk job for U.S. Senator Colles. Letty’s ready to quit, but her skills have impressed Colles, and he offers her a carrot: feet-on-the-ground investigative work, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security.

Several oil companies in Texas have reported thefts of crude, Colles tells her. He isn’t so much concerned with the oil as he is with the money: who is selling the oil, and what are they doing with the profits? Rumor has it that a fairly ugly militia group—led by a woman—might be involved. Colles wants to know if the money is going to them, and if so, what they’re planning.

Letty is partnered with a DHS investigator, John Kaiser, and they head to Texas. When the case quicky turns deadly, they know they’re on the track of something bigger. The militia group have set in motion an explosive plan . . . and the clock is ticking down.

This novel has all the elements that make John Sandford a bestseller: propulsive action, cop humor, and fully-formed characters. I cannot wait for the next Letty Davenport installment. High Recommended! #TheInvestigator #NetGalley

Thank you NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam for the eARC.
This is the start of a series featuring Letty Davenport, Lucas' adopted 24-year old daughter and it's a good one. She's tough, tenacious and very smart. Some reviewers mention she has sociopathic tendencies, but I don't agree. It's kill or be killed!
She's partnered with DHS Agent John Kaiser and they're investigating a dangerous militia group (led by a woman) who are stealing oil and also involved in keeping immigrants from entering Texas.
I liked the duo a lot and hope Kaiser will be featured again in the next in the series.
John Sandford can do no wrong in my book world, every book I've read of his is top-notch and I'm impressed by the fact that, after so many years of writing, he keeps each work fresh, exciting and full of action. Can't wait for the next Letty Davenport!
Highly recommended.

I'm going to start by saying that this character, Letty Davenport, has lots of potential for a future series, especially if she continues to work with her DHS partner John Kaiser. John Sandford's Virgil Flowers series is one of my very favorites so I really wanted to love this new character. I thought the story line was just OK. It got a little too political for me and it dragged in the middle. I did like the investigation and reasoning abilities of Letty and John and the story flowed well enough to keep me interested and wanting to see how it all ended. Of course, as most good series do, it ended on the promise of a sequel. I would recommend this book to John Sandford fans. It wasn't quite four stars for me but it was at least three and a half.

A new series by John Sanford? Yes, please! Sandford takes one of his most intriguing characters in his Prey series, Letty Davenport, and gives her her own world, separate from her famous cop, now US Marshal, father, Lucas Davenport. Sandford gives us just enough of Letty’s back story so that the reader doesn’t have to read 25 years worth of Prey novels to enjoy The Investigator. Letty is given a special title of “researcher” with the Department of Homeland Security which sets her on the path of tracking a militia group intent on stopping immigration at southern border. Sandford has a knack for creating female antagonists, and he doesn’t disappoint with Jane Jael Hawkes, the leader of the militia group. The book was a bit uneven, but still a great start to what promises to be a very good series with strong women characters.

Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for allowing me to read The Investigator. I don't know if I have read every single one of John Sanford's books but I must be close. He is so prolific and new characters/heros keep showing up to start new series. Luke Davenport manages to be in every book even if just in the background.

I believe this is the first in a new series involving Davenport's adopted daughter, Lettie. She is smart, she's been trained well by her father, and now she is working for DHS (Dept of Homeland Security) via a congressman. She is sent out on a mission with a partner to find out just what is happening in Texas with some missing oil.
There are two threads to the story that come together on the very last page and promise a royal cat fight.

We follow Lettie and get a lot of background on her relationship to Luke and Weather Davenport. While learning she is no-nonsense, not afraid, and quite confident of her skills. She is also a killer.
The other thread is a woman known as Jael who leads a militia that is working to stop immigrants from taking jobs away from low-class poorer Americans. She and her crew are the ones stealing the oil and have big plans with the money they are making off of the sales. Sandford=mayheim, immigrants, terrorism, and lots of guns!

The Investigator is a fast read, no heavy thinking or analyzing, just typical Sandford. The one huge difference being that the US experienced Jan. 6th and the attempted coup. I have no idea when Sandford wrote this book.
He does mention Jan. 6 at the very end and some of the incredibly stupid ways the perpetrators allowed themselves to get caught. The thing is even with the fast pace, Sandford is really good at helping us understand why militia do what they do, how most have learned to be killers in prison, and there probably is no end in sight.

I really enjoyed this book and look forward to more of Letty Davenport.

I have read most of the Lucas Davenport series, and the Virgil Flowers series. However, I felt they were getting a little repetitive. So when I saw John Sandford started new series I was excited! I really like his writing, and was looking forward to a few hours of escape.

I have mixed reviews on this. I liked the writing, and the world building was great - I could totally picture the action. I thought the story was really interesting, and I learned some new things about oil production, which I really enjoyed. I think it's great when a book not only entertains me, but teaches me something new.

The action was pretty much non stop which was one of the things I loved the most----- and hated the most. I loved how engaged I was, and how it was pure energy. However, I would have liked a little more character development - because I liked the people and wanted to get to know them better. But this book went from action to action to action. And Letty was almost portrayed as a sociopath rather than an efficient investigator. I get why she locked up her emotions, but it felt almost too much.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. 3.5 stars gets rounded to 4 - because I fully intend to read the next book in this series!

Thank you to the author #johnStandford the publisher and #netgalley for the ARC which did not impact my review.

It took me forever to get through this book. I was so excited for the book about Letty because I love her character, but there was something about how she’s portrayed as a bit of a sociopath that I didn’t enjoy. There’s discussion about her attitude when she reflects on speaking to Lucas about it, but still… The parts of the book with her and Kaiser were better than the parts with just the militia which made reading it a bit uneven. I also didn’t love the very end - it seemed to abrupt. I gave it 3 stars because overall the book was entertaining and also timely. I liked how smart Letty was and how everyone underestimated her because of her age and the fact that she was a woman only to be proven wrong again and again. The book had a different feeling than the Prey novels, but I think readers will still enjoy it.

Nice! Letty Davenport is a worthy successor to her dad, a tough and capable investigator with a sense of right and wrong. I’m looking forward to more in this series.

A new series by John Sanford continuing on with the life of Letty Davenport from the prey series. Sandford tells us all we need to know about Letty—her difficult childhood, her adoption, and her no nonsense character. Reader's do not need to have read a single Prey novel to enjoy this book.
The theme is based on three things most of us are familiar with—far-right militias, domestic terrorism and immigration.
I highly recommend this read for anyone that enjoys a fast paced thriller.

The investigator by John Sanford is exciting non-stop action as Letty Davenport, without hesitation, steps into her father's (Lucas Davenport) shoes to solve the crime.

The Investigator by John Sandford—A brilliant series starter even by Sandford’s lofty standards.

It isn’t easy to write a review of a John Sandford novel without gushing superlatives, but I’ll do my best to remain professional. I’ve been a dedicated Sandford fan since reading Rules of Prey, the first book in the bestselling Lucas Davenport Prey series. While the Prey series remains my favorite, I also have read and enjoyed every novel in the Kidd and Virgil Flowers series.

We all have favorite authors whose passion for writing seemed to wane once they had written a few bestsellers, earned a lot of money, and became household names. The prolific John Sandford, with over forty bestsellers, is not one of those authors. He continues to pour his best efforts and considerable writing skills, honed to a razor-sharp edge during his days as a journalist, into every book. Sandford has never written a bad book, in my estimation. The Investigator is no exception. His writing is as crisp and fresh as ever.

On the verge of quitting her boring, low-ranking senatorial assistant and researcher job, twenty-four-year-old Letty Davenport reconsiders when her boss, Senator Christopher Colles, offers her a new position. She is to become his liaison to the Homeland Security IG’s office, complete with DHS credentials and a gun carry permit. With the change in assignment, Letty partners with DHS agent John Kaiser, a former Delta operator, and veteran of multiple combat tours. The pair travel to West Texas to investigate crude oil thefts from some Permian Basin producers. Their objective is not to bust the oil thieves, a matter for local law enforcement, but to determine what the crooks are buying with the oil money. But after stumbling onto a double homicide, Davenport and Kaiser find themselves up against heavily armed, ruthless members of a far-right militia group led by a shadowy woman who goes by the nom de guerre, Jael. After uncovering that the militia group has got their hands on stolen military explosives and seems bent on pulling off some kind of terrorist attack, Letty and her partner must find a way to stop them before there is a mass casualty event.

When I learned that John Sandford had written the first novel in a new series featuring Letty Davenport, I couldn’t wait to read it. Imagine how thrilled I was to get my hands on an advance copy from the publisher more than seven months before its release. The hardest part of being a John Sandford fan has always been waiting impatiently for the next book to come out.

Letty Davenport, the adopted daughter of Lucas and Weather Davenport, first appeared at age twelve in Sandford’s Naked Prey, the fourteenth novel in the Prey series. When a crooked cop murdered the then Letty West’s alcoholic mother leaving her orphaned with no family to take her in, Lucas and his wife became her legal guardians and later adopted her. I’ve liked the Letty character ever since. Even as a twelve-year-old, due to her difficult upbringing, Letty was always been smart and tough as nails. Every Prey novel since Naked Prey has mentioned Letty, and she has been a key supporting character in some. So it seemed almost inevitable that once Letty reached adulthood, like prominent Prey series character Virgil Flowers, she would eventually star in a series spinoff of her own. Enter The Investigator.

Filled with suspense, rich characterization, and the exceptional drama that are hallmarks of Sandford’s writing, this is one of his best novels yet. Fans of the Prey series will know that Letty and Lucas are kindred spirits.

After Letty once shot and killed two intruders who broke into the Davenport home intent on killing the family, Weather told her daughter, seemingly unaffected by the killings, that she was almost exactly like her father—that they both made very cold judgments about people, about their worth, and didn’t cut them any slack. But when Lucas heard about the conversation, he assured Letty that they weren’t psychos or sociopaths who killed without remorse. Instead, he explained that they were “pragmatists—really harsh pragmatists” willing to do what must be done. So, unsurprisingly, in The Investigator, Letty Davenport proves a near-perfect archetype of her father, Lucas. That’s one of the things I liked most about the novel. Unfortunately, as painful as it is to admit, Lucas Davenport is getting old for a credible law enforcement officer after thirty-one books. We must assume that the Prey series is likely approaching its logical conclusion. This series will make a worthy replacement.

While I was already well acquainted with Letty Davenport, the reader doesn’t need to have read a single Prey novel to enjoy this book. Using effective flashbacks, Sandford tells us all we need to know about Letty—her difficult childhood, her adoption, character, and worldview. Even those who might pick up this book as their first John Sandford novel won’t be lost because of unknown past backstory.

Besides Letty, I also truly liked the John Kaiser character, her partner. He reminds me a good bit of Bob Mattes, a deputy marshal with the U. S. Marshal’s Special Operations Group, a gregarious and pivotal character (and a personal favorite) in several of Lucas Davenport’s past adventures in the Prey series.

As we’ve come to expect, Sandford paints for us some interesting, ruthless, and realistic antagonists that we’re eager to root against as John bounces them off of Letty and Kaiser. As usual, he uses multiple points of view so that we not only understand who the bad boys and girls are but what they intend to do and why.

What I think made the plot particularly interesting and realistic is that Sandford chose the circumstances on which to create it based on two things most of us are well familiar with—far-right militias (think ex-Army soldier and domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh and the Branch Davidian religious cult), and immigration which the current southern border crisis has thrust back into the center of public debate with the unprecedented numbers of migrants entering the country. The author features both themes prominently in this novel.

If you are a crime thriller enthusiast, especially a John Sandford fan, you won’t want to miss The Investigator. I can’t recommend it enough. I didn’t read it in one sitting as I started the book late one afternoon. While I hated to put it down, I didn’t finish it until the following morning. Still, at 400 pages, it’s a fast read. Having watched the video of a recent John Sandford interview, I knew his editor told him the ending seemed flat and recommended a re-write. Evidently, the author punched it up marvelously since I found the ending very satisfying. In no small measure, that is because the ending seems to promise this isn’t the last Letty Davenport novel.

The Investigator, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC,
will be available from April 12, 2022. As I mentioned at the start, I received an advance copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley used for this review, representing my honest and unbiased opinions.

The Investigator by John Sandford is a new crime thriller featuring Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter Letty. Letty is now a twenty-four-year-old graduate of Sanford and currently working for a U.S. Senator. Letty is asked to undertake a particular assignment with Homeland Security; she jumps at the chance to be out in the field tracking missing oil used to fund a supremacist group opposing immigration at the southern border. I have read all the Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers books and love the series. The author provides the much-needed background details of Letty’s life to show what makes Letty unique. I can’t want to read the next book in this series. Thank you, Net Galley, for this ARC.