What is the author's style in the novel, Easy Prey?

Easy Prey roughly follows the formula of the classical detective story by introducing the detective, presenting the crime, having the investigation, offering the solution, explaining the solution, and apprehending the criminal. Easy Prey does complicate the classical formula greatly by having the crime occur first, having the investigation focus on the wrong victim, presenting and explaining an incorrect solution, having a second murderer, and only apprehending one of the two murderers.

In many ways, Easy Prey is more of a hard-boiled detective novel than a classical one because of its focus on the cynical detective and the society. However, Easy Prey does not contain many minor characteristics of the traditional hard-boiled detective story such as the betrayer-lover and the intimidation of the detective, and it also differs in some of the major aspects. Whereas the hard-boiled detective pursues a quixotic sense of justice, Davenport's motivation is defeating the criminal. As the narrator says, Davenport "[f]elt the dark finger of hypocrisy stroking his soul. All for justice, he thought. Or something. Winning, maybe." Davenport pursues the threads of information, seeking to capture the criminals, because it is his job and because he likes to succeed, not out of a passion to see justice done. John Sandford shows an awareness of both the classical and hard-boiled traditions, forming a hybrid that contains aspects of the two, accompanied by new variations.