Toxic Prey

Dr. Lionel Scott is a respected authority on tropical and infectious diseases, and he has spent his career watching illness and upheaval tear through communities. Somewhere along the way he arrived at a chilling conviction: the Earth is dying, and the cause is people. In his view, overpopulation and a world sliding into disorder are driving the planet toward collapse, and the only way to save it is to remove the threat. He believes he is exactly the person to do it.

Then Scott vanishes. Letty Davenport, a federal agent, is handed the job of chasing down every lead. The case is far bigger than one missing man. Scott has worked on sensitive research into how viruses and pathogens spread, and he holds an unusually high level of security clearance at several institutions, Los Alamos National Laboratory among them. Agencies at home and abroad are on edge, and the more Letty digs, the more tangled the picture becomes.

She brings in her father, Lucas Davenport, to help lead a team of specialists. Together they find disturbing links between Scott and a circle of conspiracy-minded believers who see the planet as a living thing that must be defended. Their worst suspicions begin to look justified, and the hunt turns into a race against time to find Scott before the virus he has created can be used as a weapon.

Toxic Prey is a Lucas Davenport and Letty Davenport thriller by John Sandford, built around a fast-moving manhunt where the stakes are global.