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Kidd and LuEllen #2
The Empress File
Pulitzer Prize-winner John Camp--author of Shadow Prey, f Prey, and the first novel featuring the enigmatic Kidd, The Fool's Run--returns with another Kidd thriller. After the cover-up of the shooting of 14-year-old Darrell Clark by police, Darrell's friend Marvel links up with Kidd through Darrell's computer, and they plot to bring down the corrupt officials involved.
363 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1991
1113 people are currently reading
2003 people want to read
About the author
John Camp
16 books67 followersJohn Roswell Camp is the real name for author John Sandford.
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of over twenty Prey novels; eight Virgil Flowers novels, and seven other books, including the young adult novels Uncaged and Outrage, written with Michele Cook. He lives in New Mexico.
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of over twenty Prey novels; eight Virgil Flowers novels, and seven other books, including the young adult novels Uncaged and Outrage, written with Michele Cook. He lives in New Mexico.
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October 31, 2025
The Empress File teams up the Kidd and LuEllen dynamic duo once again to take on Longstreet, Tennessee - a small, segregated, and unsavory town located on the outskirts of Nashville.
Kidd has been summoned there at the request of Bobby, his computer genius friend, after learning a 14-year-old black teen boy was shot down indiscriminately by two local racist cops.
Neither officer even attempted to ascertain all the facts or a positive ID before mercilessly gunning the young boy down from behind. Bobby knew the teen online as a computer genius like no other. Now, he wants Kidd and LuEllen to make them pay by turning the town on its insular axis.
This fast and furious action-filled page-turner takes us on a journey through the underbelly of small town political corruption, greed, and oppression. An impossible to put down nail-biter. John Sandford always hits his mark. Definitely reading the remaining two books. Highly recommend.
Kidd has been summoned there at the request of Bobby, his computer genius friend, after learning a 14-year-old black teen boy was shot down indiscriminately by two local racist cops.
Neither officer even attempted to ascertain all the facts or a positive ID before mercilessly gunning the young boy down from behind. Bobby knew the teen online as a computer genius like no other. Now, he wants Kidd and LuEllen to make them pay by turning the town on its insular axis.
This fast and furious action-filled page-turner takes us on a journey through the underbelly of small town political corruption, greed, and oppression. An impossible to put down nail-biter. John Sandford always hits his mark. Definitely reading the remaining two books. Highly recommend.
May 8, 2019
This involves a small group of people running an operation to take down a bunch of corrupt politicians who use extreme gerrymandering and dirty tricks to stay in power while they steal everything they can and screw over everyone they claim to represent in the process.
I kinda feel we should all be taking notes from this one.
Longstreet is small river city in Mississippi where the local officials are crooked as a dog’s back leg. After an innocent unarmed young black man is mistakenly killed by the police the whole thing is quickly swept under the rug. However, a group of left-wing activists have had enough and want to take over the town by any means necessary.
This brings artist/computer-expert/saboteur Kidd into it by his hacker buddy Bobby who was a friend of the murdered kid. The idea is Kidd will come up with a plan to dismantle the local political machine so the activists can take over the city council. Kidd is sympathetic to the cause, but his real motivation is that corruption means money being involved so there’s a good chance of a big payday. To help with that angle he contacts his friend/professional thief/sometime-lover LuEllen to help find a way to get the dirty officials out of office and steal all they can from them while doing so. However, they’ll have to be very careful because they’re kicking an awfully big hornet’s nest.
One of the primary reasons I really like it is that it’s just such a cool concept. A shady hacker tries to take down a ring of crooked politicians who control a small city? I could read about that all day long. As with the first book, The Fool's Run, the schemes that Kidd comes up with are devilishly clever and seem realistic. As he and LuEllen track down where the locals have stashed their loot so they can rob them, they’re also working on a scam to expose them as well cooking up a way for the activists to take over once the dust settles. Sandford has a knack for writing people planning and executing criminal acts, and these play out as essentially elaborate heist novels.
Another Sandford talent is creating characters that are fun to read about. Kidd and LuEllen are two great examples of this because they’re smart, funny, interesting, talented, and come across as real people instead of the kind of cartoon characters you get in lesser thrillers. They also don’t make excuses or rationalizations about who they are, and they have a clear-eyed pragmatism about being criminals despite sometimes having good intentions. Even though they try their best to avoid violence they’re also starting to question how many people still end up dead when they pull one of these jobs.
It’s also interesting that even though this book was published in 1991 and involves some computer tech that it doesn’t feel dated at all. In fact, even though Sandford has been writing these kinds of books for 30 years and frequently includes technology of the moment, they all age exceptionally well. That's probably because the main plots are rooted in ideas and themes that don’t change, and the tech is just window dressing. This book starts with a trigger happy cop killing an unarmed black kid, and then it rolls into massive political corruption. He obviously could have done that set-up today and just changed a few minor things like subbing wi-fi for dialing into a modem.
The only thing I disliked is that the main thug is the town’s animal control officer, and there’s a pretty nasty stuff in his treatment of dogs and cats to make it clear that he’s a sadistic bastard. Sandford doesn’t engage in misery or torture porn, but he does know how to write a scene that will make your skin crawl. Since I can’t stand to read about animals being abused I could have lived without that, but again, it’s relatively brief, and we don’t have to dwell on the details so it’s fairly easy to skim over and get the essence of that character.
I kinda feel we should all be taking notes from this one.
Longstreet is small river city in Mississippi where the local officials are crooked as a dog’s back leg. After an innocent unarmed young black man is mistakenly killed by the police the whole thing is quickly swept under the rug. However, a group of left-wing activists have had enough and want to take over the town by any means necessary.
This brings artist/computer-expert/saboteur Kidd into it by his hacker buddy Bobby who was a friend of the murdered kid. The idea is Kidd will come up with a plan to dismantle the local political machine so the activists can take over the city council. Kidd is sympathetic to the cause, but his real motivation is that corruption means money being involved so there’s a good chance of a big payday. To help with that angle he contacts his friend/professional thief/sometime-lover LuEllen to help find a way to get the dirty officials out of office and steal all they can from them while doing so. However, they’ll have to be very careful because they’re kicking an awfully big hornet’s nest.
One of the primary reasons I really like it is that it’s just such a cool concept. A shady hacker tries to take down a ring of crooked politicians who control a small city? I could read about that all day long. As with the first book, The Fool's Run, the schemes that Kidd comes up with are devilishly clever and seem realistic. As he and LuEllen track down where the locals have stashed their loot so they can rob them, they’re also working on a scam to expose them as well cooking up a way for the activists to take over once the dust settles. Sandford has a knack for writing people planning and executing criminal acts, and these play out as essentially elaborate heist novels.
Another Sandford talent is creating characters that are fun to read about. Kidd and LuEllen are two great examples of this because they’re smart, funny, interesting, talented, and come across as real people instead of the kind of cartoon characters you get in lesser thrillers. They also don’t make excuses or rationalizations about who they are, and they have a clear-eyed pragmatism about being criminals despite sometimes having good intentions. Even though they try their best to avoid violence they’re also starting to question how many people still end up dead when they pull one of these jobs.
It’s also interesting that even though this book was published in 1991 and involves some computer tech that it doesn’t feel dated at all. In fact, even though Sandford has been writing these kinds of books for 30 years and frequently includes technology of the moment, they all age exceptionally well. That's probably because the main plots are rooted in ideas and themes that don’t change, and the tech is just window dressing. This book starts with a trigger happy cop killing an unarmed black kid, and then it rolls into massive political corruption. He obviously could have done that set-up today and just changed a few minor things like subbing wi-fi for dialing into a modem.
The only thing I disliked is that the main thug is the town’s animal control officer, and there’s a pretty nasty stuff in his treatment of dogs and cats to make it clear that he’s a sadistic bastard. Sandford doesn’t engage in misery or torture porn, but he does know how to write a scene that will make your skin crawl. Since I can’t stand to read about animals being abused I could have lived without that, but again, it’s relatively brief, and we don’t have to dwell on the details so it’s fairly easy to skim over and get the essence of that character.
July 17, 2013
I'm a John Sandford fan but this book was an exception. I had trouble getting into and following the plot. The information included about the animal shelter (although accurate I'm sure) was less than endearing and was very disconcerting.
December 15, 2013
The second in the KIDD novels, this one heads a completely different direction than the first. Instead of corporate spying, Kidd and his partners head into the deep south and get involved in a political tug-of-war.
In all honesty, this wasn't one of my favorite Sandford novels, but it was a diverting read. It was nice to have him try something different, and the southern setting and look at race relations and small-town secrets led to some interesting moments. Overall, though, it wasn't as cohesive or suspenseful as the best of the Lucas Davenport books. There were several plot twists that I predicted, and the ending fell a bit flat for me.
Still, it's better than 80% of the thrillers out there, and worth your time for a quick, diverting read.
In all honesty, this wasn't one of my favorite Sandford novels, but it was a diverting read. It was nice to have him try something different, and the southern setting and look at race relations and small-town secrets led to some interesting moments. Overall, though, it wasn't as cohesive or suspenseful as the best of the Lucas Davenport books. There were several plot twists that I predicted, and the ending fell a bit flat for me.
Still, it's better than 80% of the thrillers out there, and worth your time for a quick, diverting read.
November 29, 2017
Second in The Kidd psychological suspense series and revolving around a brilliant man whose computer hacking supports his art career. Based in Minneapolis, Kidd will sail down to Mississippi to right the wrongs of corruption.
My Take
Most of what I’ve been reading the last few years has been about detectives, private investigators, and that type of thriller-mystery-suspense, and it’s a bit of a twist to read of someone out for himself — Kidd has an interesting moral code. He mainly works to make money so he can continue to paint. He prefers to work on the side of good, and sometimes he’s the good. That attitude really comes out in The Empress File. A bit coldhearted, but also very realistic.
Of course, he can be as stupid as the rest of us too. His accountant sure is shaking her head. And the IRS would like a word.
It all starts in a small Southern town with trigger-happy cops who can’t be bothered when it’s a black person. A murder that riles up the disaffected. One of whom is a friend of Bobby Duchamps.
That scheme to shake up the city council was a good ‘un and definitely causes greed to rear up. Sorry, I should have said “schemes”, ‘cause Kidd and LuEllen are mighty busy ticking people off.
There is a heavy price to pay for this clean-up, and it’s a case of eventually crime doesn’t pay with karma catching up to the bad guys.
The Story
One stifling summer night in Longstreet, Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Darrell Clark ran home thinking about two things: the ice cream he couldn't wait to eat and an algorithm he was working on, a way to generate real time fractal terrain on his Macintosh computer. The cops who shot him in the back, mistaking him for a purse snatcher, found the ice cream in the paper bag on the ground next to Darrell. They'd never know about the events they had just set in motion.
When the predictable cover-up occurs, a group of blacks, led by Marvel Atkins, decide the time for action has come. The city government must go. Through John’s friendship with Bobby, Marvel, with the incredible liquid eyes, links up with Kidd, who takes on jobs that may be a little beyond the law.
She lays out the objective, but he makes the plan. The mayor, city council, and city attorney are all corrupt. The firehouse is the center for drug dealing, and the recreation director skims money like algae from the municipal swimming pool. And then there's Duane Hill, the dogcatcher/enforcer who uses Dobermans to get his way.
Kidd will simply find the crack in the machine and work it until the city comes down like a house of tarot cards.
The Characters
Kidd has an impressive past and currently lives in a paid-off condo (a warehouse conversion) with a similar place, paid-off, in New Orleans. His legit computer work is working an economic and psychological profile program he developed that politicians are really into. The illegit is usually stealing ideas. He likes the Waite-Rider tarot deck; he believes it forces him to a different perspective. Chaminade Loan doesn’t like coming second in anyone’s life.
LuEllen “Case” is a burglar who restricts her thefts to money from people who can afford to lose it. The Wee Blue Inn is a very bad place run by Weenie; he’s LuEllen’s phone drop.
Bobby Duchamps is an online friend whom Kidd has never met. He’s a wizard on the Internet and an even better hacker.
Longstreet, Mississippi, is…
…run by a corrupt city council: the suspicious Chenille Dessusdelit is mayor and the city’s chief administrative officer with a powerful greed for money (Ralph is her deceased husband); the Reverend Luther Dodge runs a Baptist church and a city recreation center where he clips the tickets and enjoys a nasty perversion; Carl Rebek is an insurance agent who does what he’s told and collects a piece of the pie; Arnie St. Thomas is a loan shark who uses the city money for his piggy bank; and, Lucius Bell, the only straight shooter, is a farmer with a need for a bridge.
Duane Hill is animal control…and the machine’s muscle. He does love him some shootin’ out at the shelter. Archie Ballem is the city attorney and their fixer. Mary Wells is the city clerk; her brother has the Chevy dealership in town.
Officers Roy R. “Tud” Dick and Billy Lee Teeter are way too gung-ho with the weapons. Lucy is a police dispatcher. The fire department handles the dope trafficking.
Marvel Atkins is a Marxist with plans. Harold has been friends with Marvel since childhood. John Smith works for a legal services company that does investigations…and he’s an artist. Becka Clay is a cleaning woman at City Hall.
Brooking Davis is a lawyer who does appraisal work for the county assessor. Matron Carter coaches basketball at Longstreet High School. Marvin Lesse and Bill Armistead are being set up for a temporary seat.
Darrell Clark is 14 years old, is brilliant on a computer, and has a hunger for ice cream. Clarisse Barnwright, a.k.a., “Old Lady Barnwright”, is a retired Latin and English teacher and thrilled her husband has died. Clayton Rand saw the mugging. Elvis Coultier is the night manager for E-Z Way, a convenience store. Annie Carlson is a bit of an exhibitionist. Danny Oakes was running his mouth. Humdinger’s is a ferns-and-antique-bricks restaurant where the movers and shakers lunch. Gloriana Trent has a house with a view; her family owns the department and sporting goods stores in town. Brown owns some land along the river bank.
Fred is a river rat who tutored Kidd and LuEllen in piloting a houseboat, the Fanny . Maggie Kahn had been the disaster in The Fool's Run , 1. Lund is Kidd’s art dealer in Chicago. The Cale Gallery represents Kidd in New Orleans.
The Cover and Title
The cover is a deep royal blue, the deep blue of a snow-filled landscape at night, stretching out into the distance. A wave of a film strip with a bright red background silhouettes five different figures in action. The author’s name and title are both in an embossed dull gold, one at the top and the other at the bottom with info blurbs in white.
The title refers to a card in the tarot, one that could apply to any one of three people. It’s The Empress File, for sure.
My Take
Most of what I’ve been reading the last few years has been about detectives, private investigators, and that type of thriller-mystery-suspense, and it’s a bit of a twist to read of someone out for himself — Kidd has an interesting moral code. He mainly works to make money so he can continue to paint. He prefers to work on the side of good, and sometimes he’s the good. That attitude really comes out in The Empress File. A bit coldhearted, but also very realistic.
Of course, he can be as stupid as the rest of us too. His accountant sure is shaking her head. And the IRS would like a word.
It all starts in a small Southern town with trigger-happy cops who can’t be bothered when it’s a black person. A murder that riles up the disaffected. One of whom is a friend of Bobby Duchamps.
”’Goddamn it, Billy Lee,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You went and shot yourself the wrong nigger.’”.It’s backroom deals, breaking-and-entering, and using a tarot deck to instill the “proper” motivation with a first person protagonist point-of-view from Kidd’s perspective. And it doesn’t take Kidd’s POV to ensure I understood that Hill and St. Thomas are jerks when they’re shooting kittens in a cage for fun.
That scheme to shake up the city council was a good ‘un and definitely causes greed to rear up. Sorry, I should have said “schemes”, ‘cause Kidd and LuEllen are mighty busy ticking people off.
There is a heavy price to pay for this clean-up, and it’s a case of eventually crime doesn’t pay with karma catching up to the bad guys.
The Story
One stifling summer night in Longstreet, Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Darrell Clark ran home thinking about two things: the ice cream he couldn't wait to eat and an algorithm he was working on, a way to generate real time fractal terrain on his Macintosh computer. The cops who shot him in the back, mistaking him for a purse snatcher, found the ice cream in the paper bag on the ground next to Darrell. They'd never know about the events they had just set in motion.
When the predictable cover-up occurs, a group of blacks, led by Marvel Atkins, decide the time for action has come. The city government must go. Through John’s friendship with Bobby, Marvel, with the incredible liquid eyes, links up with Kidd, who takes on jobs that may be a little beyond the law.
She lays out the objective, but he makes the plan. The mayor, city council, and city attorney are all corrupt. The firehouse is the center for drug dealing, and the recreation director skims money like algae from the municipal swimming pool. And then there's Duane Hill, the dogcatcher/enforcer who uses Dobermans to get his way.
Kidd will simply find the crack in the machine and work it until the city comes down like a house of tarot cards.
The Characters
Kidd has an impressive past and currently lives in a paid-off condo (a warehouse conversion) with a similar place, paid-off, in New Orleans. His legit computer work is working an economic and psychological profile program he developed that politicians are really into. The illegit is usually stealing ideas. He likes the Waite-Rider tarot deck; he believes it forces him to a different perspective. Chaminade Loan doesn’t like coming second in anyone’s life.
LuEllen “Case” is a burglar who restricts her thefts to money from people who can afford to lose it. The Wee Blue Inn is a very bad place run by Weenie; he’s LuEllen’s phone drop.
Bobby Duchamps is an online friend whom Kidd has never met. He’s a wizard on the Internet and an even better hacker.
Longstreet, Mississippi, is…
…run by a corrupt city council: the suspicious Chenille Dessusdelit is mayor and the city’s chief administrative officer with a powerful greed for money (Ralph is her deceased husband); the Reverend Luther Dodge runs a Baptist church and a city recreation center where he clips the tickets and enjoys a nasty perversion; Carl Rebek is an insurance agent who does what he’s told and collects a piece of the pie; Arnie St. Thomas is a loan shark who uses the city money for his piggy bank; and, Lucius Bell, the only straight shooter, is a farmer with a need for a bridge.
Duane Hill is animal control…and the machine’s muscle. He does love him some shootin’ out at the shelter. Archie Ballem is the city attorney and their fixer. Mary Wells is the city clerk; her brother has the Chevy dealership in town.
Officers Roy R. “Tud” Dick and Billy Lee Teeter are way too gung-ho with the weapons. Lucy is a police dispatcher. The fire department handles the dope trafficking.
Marvel Atkins is a Marxist with plans. Harold has been friends with Marvel since childhood. John Smith works for a legal services company that does investigations…and he’s an artist. Becka Clay is a cleaning woman at City Hall.
Brooking Davis is a lawyer who does appraisal work for the county assessor. Matron Carter coaches basketball at Longstreet High School. Marvin Lesse and Bill Armistead are being set up for a temporary seat.
Darrell Clark is 14 years old, is brilliant on a computer, and has a hunger for ice cream. Clarisse Barnwright, a.k.a., “Old Lady Barnwright”, is a retired Latin and English teacher and thrilled her husband has died. Clayton Rand saw the mugging. Elvis Coultier is the night manager for E-Z Way, a convenience store. Annie Carlson is a bit of an exhibitionist. Danny Oakes was running his mouth. Humdinger’s is a ferns-and-antique-bricks restaurant where the movers and shakers lunch. Gloriana Trent has a house with a view; her family owns the department and sporting goods stores in town. Brown owns some land along the river bank.
Fred is a river rat who tutored Kidd and LuEllen in piloting a houseboat, the Fanny . Maggie Kahn had been the disaster in The Fool's Run , 1. Lund is Kidd’s art dealer in Chicago. The Cale Gallery represents Kidd in New Orleans.
The Cover and Title
The cover is a deep royal blue, the deep blue of a snow-filled landscape at night, stretching out into the distance. A wave of a film strip with a bright red background silhouettes five different figures in action. The author’s name and title are both in an embossed dull gold, one at the top and the other at the bottom with info blurbs in white.
The title refers to a card in the tarot, one that could apply to any one of three people. It’s The Empress File, for sure.
July 20, 2012
Another of Sandford's early works, written as John Camp, featuring Kidd and LuEllen. Kidd is a computer geek (80's style), an artist, a Tarot Card reader, and a criminal. LuEllen is not as complex, she's just a high class burglar.
Kidd and LuEllen are asked by Bobby, their go to guy for computer hacking, to help out a friend in a small Mississippi town. The task involves taking down the town mayor and town council.
Bodies mount and break ins are the theme in this fast moving novel.
Personally, I really enjoy stories about revenge and retribution. This one fills my comfort zone quite nicely.
Kidd and LuEllen are asked by Bobby, their go to guy for computer hacking, to help out a friend in a small Mississippi town. The task involves taking down the town mayor and town council.
Bodies mount and break ins are the theme in this fast moving novel.
Personally, I really enjoy stories about revenge and retribution. This one fills my comfort zone quite nicely.
June 23, 2016
Kidd returns, as does LuEllen, a professional thief who is Kidd’s occasional partner and occasional lover. This time his task is to take down Longstreet, a corrupt Delta town on the eastern side of the Mississippi River, presumably in Louisiana but perhaps Mississippi. Not just an expert computer hacker, Kidd has made his official living as a designer of political strategy. It makes him the perfect person to destroy the town’s power structure. The conclusion is not as satisfying as in Kidd’s previous outing, Fool’s Run, mainly because it ends in a physical confrontation, denying us the pleasure of watching the bad guy’s world crumble around them. But still worth the read.
June 20, 2019
The third in the series of four Kidd novels by John Sandford (Camp). These apparently were the first novels Camp/Sandford wrote before he struck gold with the Lucas Davenport "Prey" series. It's very slow moving in places and there is too much "tech talk" for my liking. Not to mention the "tech" is all obsolete these days. However, the plot thickens and accelerates in the last 100 pages and is pretty good suspenseful writing. My biggest criticism of the Kidd series is the lack of character development. Everyone is a stick figure--no meat on their bones. No wonder Camp/Sandford abandoned it after the fourth novel and final novel (which I just started).
August 26, 2017
It was off to a engaging start. About half way through the story lost steam, I got lost on a lot of twist and turns but could figure it out enough until the end. A fast read. Some colorful characters. Tarot card readings, a crystal ball and superstition interwoven throughout, along with political upheaval in a corrupt small town setting .
May 11, 2021
The Kidd books will never be my favourites of the John Sandford/John Camp books, but I did enjoy this one more than the first and I know that I will go ahead and read more of the series. The whole idea of the computer use, painting, and settling of scores, including windfalls of money, is intriguing.
December 1, 2017
This was an interesting book. It wasn't so much about computer hacking as Kidd and LuEllen using their skills to take down a town. It was interesting to see how they did it. You might find it interesting as well, but I think it's a bit far fetched.
September 1, 2019
The steamy south-- Longstreet, Mississippi, to be exact. Full of corrupt politicians, white racists running the local government, and some pretty determined black citizens seeking to upend the political machine. Led by local "socialist democrat," Marvel Atkins, these individuals find Kidd through the ever mysterious Bobby, all by computer and phone, mind you, who agrees to lend his expertise.
And what would a Kidd & LuEllen story be without LuEllen, the semi-mysterious burglar who occasionally sleeps with Kidd and often lends him her stealthy skills along the way? These two make a great pair and the reader knows that Kidd is in love with her, but she's so protective of her identity that pinning her down into a long-term relationship, especially with Kidd (who kind of sucks at long term relationships), is unlikely at best.
Nevertheless, they team up to help Marvel and company defeat some thoroughly despicable characters. Camp (aka, Sandford), draws characters as well as anyone, and lends a convincing sense of place in describing the little Southern town, complete with stifling heat, copperheads, and lots of bugs.
I really enjoy this series, but was a bit disappointed in this one. The storyline became more convoluted than I though necessary, and as others have mentioned, the ending involved more physical violence than I've come to expect from these stories. I would have preferred to have Camp handle the uber-nasty animal control officer, Duane Hill, in a different manner, instead of letting him go to town on Kidd, but what do I know? And there is an awful lot of time spent on Kidd using the tarot cards to subtly lead Mayor Chenille Dessusdelit into such a state that she wouldn't know if her head was on fire and her "ass was a catchin'." All in all, it felt just a bit overdone to me.
Still an enjoyable read, but just short of the typical 4 or more star ratings that I usually feel this series deserves.
And what would a Kidd & LuEllen story be without LuEllen, the semi-mysterious burglar who occasionally sleeps with Kidd and often lends him her stealthy skills along the way? These two make a great pair and the reader knows that Kidd is in love with her, but she's so protective of her identity that pinning her down into a long-term relationship, especially with Kidd (who kind of sucks at long term relationships), is unlikely at best.
Nevertheless, they team up to help Marvel and company defeat some thoroughly despicable characters. Camp (aka, Sandford), draws characters as well as anyone, and lends a convincing sense of place in describing the little Southern town, complete with stifling heat, copperheads, and lots of bugs.
I really enjoy this series, but was a bit disappointed in this one. The storyline became more convoluted than I though necessary, and as others have mentioned, the ending involved more physical violence than I've come to expect from these stories. I would have preferred to have Camp handle the uber-nasty animal control officer, Duane Hill, in a different manner, instead of letting him go to town on Kidd, but what do I know? And there is an awful lot of time spent on Kidd using the tarot cards to subtly lead Mayor Chenille Dessusdelit into such a state that she wouldn't know if her head was on fire and her "ass was a catchin'." All in all, it felt just a bit overdone to me.
Still an enjoyable read, but just short of the typical 4 or more star ratings that I usually feel this series deserves.
December 11, 2018
Kidd is such an intelligent character and both always stick to type. Just when you think there will be a stupid move to advance the story (badly) they do exactly what they are supposed to do according to the way the character is written.
August 26, 2017
Liked the story, but things just seemed to come together too easily for Kidd & Luellen. Although, karmically speaking, a month in the hospital after getting the crap kicked out of you probably balances that out quite neatly. Watching & waiting for developments on the "couple" issue, too. I remember a brief crossover in at least one of his Lucas Davenport novels, but not what their status was. Another reason to keep reading.
July 8, 2018
Interesting story about a corrupt town in the Deep South, and Kidd’s and LuEllen’s and Bobby’s attempts to change the town council membership and get the guilty people punished.
Things don’t work out quite as expected, but, overall, the result is desirable.
Things don’t work out quite as expected, but, overall, the result is desirable.
November 19, 2022
Justice gets served in the South but I didn’t love this book as much as I did the first.
July 21, 2020
This was a great series. Sad he isn't doing any more, but at least Kidd and LuEllen live on in the Prey series in a small way.
April 21, 2020
A quirky novel by one of my favorite authors (and a fellow Minnesotan!). This is a departure from his "Prey" novels because it involves two characters on the other side of the law (at least a little bit). Kidd is the computer guy/artist who is willing to commit a crime for the right reason--like taking down the city officials of a small Mississippi town who looked the other way when an innocent young black boy was shot & killed by the police.
He's joined by LuEllen, a professional burglar who also has a good heart and a moral compass. These two are fresh, believable characters who you like despite their criminality. That's often hard to do in fiction, make "bad guys" likable, but Sandford pulls it off.
The pace is frenetic, and it's sometimes hard to keep the characters straight and to understand what each step in the sting is for. But it works overall. I agree with those who didn't care for the animal cruelty scenes. Not something I expected and it could have been toned down or left out entirely.
He's joined by LuEllen, a professional burglar who also has a good heart and a moral compass. These two are fresh, believable characters who you like despite their criminality. That's often hard to do in fiction, make "bad guys" likable, but Sandford pulls it off.
The pace is frenetic, and it's sometimes hard to keep the characters straight and to understand what each step in the sting is for. But it works overall. I agree with those who didn't care for the animal cruelty scenes. Not something I expected and it could have been toned down or left out entirely.
October 24, 2019
Whew! Fun, but a lot of running about and tampering with the internet....
April 17, 2018
I'm not a big Lucas Davenport fan, but John Sandford is the master of his craft and it's just so easy to read his books and so I read every last one of the Davenport series. Then I read every last one of the Virgil Flowers books. I like Virgil. He's my kind of guy.
That left Kidd and LuEllen. Truth be told, I wasn't expecting much because these were written a long time ago. Stanford was a young man and it would have been forgivable if he hadn't mastered the art of the thriller just yet but lo and behold they're as good as anything he's written since.
I've read the whole Kidd series now but this was my favorite so I've chosen it to review. Kidd's a computer hacker and it's sort of fun to read these in 2018 because the technology is so dated, but I was around back then and Stanford gets it right. Kudos. There are a lot of authors who try to fake this sort of thing. He didn't and it matters if you understand it.
Then there's LuEllen...a cat burglar with a nose for high grade cocaine who Kidd tends to rope into his work. They really have nothing in common but they work well together.
Here's what I really like about John Sandford and this book in particular. He doesn't get preachy. A lot of northern authors tend to view the South as a caricature. They can't resist the temptation to moralize and virtue signal. Sandford doesn't do that sort of thing. Perhaps he recognizes that his native Midwest and not Dixie is the most segregated part of the nation, even now. Whatever it is, he understands the South so well that I can only assume he's spent a lot of time there and has seen the good, the bad and the otherwise. Also (and this is important) he respects his readers too much to treat them like dolts.
If you cut your John Sandford teeth on Davenport as I did, you owe it to yourself to read one of the Kidd novels. They're all good, but as I said, this was my favorite.
That left Kidd and LuEllen. Truth be told, I wasn't expecting much because these were written a long time ago. Stanford was a young man and it would have been forgivable if he hadn't mastered the art of the thriller just yet but lo and behold they're as good as anything he's written since.
I've read the whole Kidd series now but this was my favorite so I've chosen it to review. Kidd's a computer hacker and it's sort of fun to read these in 2018 because the technology is so dated, but I was around back then and Stanford gets it right. Kudos. There are a lot of authors who try to fake this sort of thing. He didn't and it matters if you understand it.
Then there's LuEllen...a cat burglar with a nose for high grade cocaine who Kidd tends to rope into his work. They really have nothing in common but they work well together.
Here's what I really like about John Sandford and this book in particular. He doesn't get preachy. A lot of northern authors tend to view the South as a caricature. They can't resist the temptation to moralize and virtue signal. Sandford doesn't do that sort of thing. Perhaps he recognizes that his native Midwest and not Dixie is the most segregated part of the nation, even now. Whatever it is, he understands the South so well that I can only assume he's spent a lot of time there and has seen the good, the bad and the otherwise. Also (and this is important) he respects his readers too much to treat them like dolts.
If you cut your John Sandford teeth on Davenport as I did, you owe it to yourself to read one of the Kidd novels. They're all good, but as I said, this was my favorite.
February 12, 2011
This was the second of the "Kidd/LuEllen" series and was published in 1991. That's 20 years ago and the age shows because Kidd is a computer geek and the technology is obviously dated. I believe Sandford only did four books in this series, the last one in 2003.
Interestingly, though, the out of date technology did not detract from my enjoyment of the story. No different, in some ways, from reading historical fiction. Put another way, technology does not drive the plot, the characters do.
Kidd, the geek, and LuEllen, a thief, are both into playing con games but usually for a good cause. They remind me of Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr and to a lesser extent his "Hitman". In this story they are trying to destroy the power structure in Longstreet, a small Mississippi River town. They, of course, hope to make sizable profit in the process while empowering the black majority and other law-abiding citizens of the town.
Unfortunately, the stakes go up precipitously when people start being murdered and their scam is close to being uncovered. The plot develops from there. There are no surprises except, perhaps, for the unmitigated brutality of those in charge of the town's fortunes.
While I've spent time in the U.S. South and have read stories of the corruption and violence in some of the more backward towns and cities there, I had a hard time believing that what went on in Longstreet could last for as long as it did. The characters were a little stereotypical but nevertheless interesting, especially the residents and rulers of Longstreet. The story's ending is also a little bit contrived but by that time I was so hooked that I was happy with what happened to the major characters.
I enjoyed this story enough so that I plan to get my hands on some of the other Kidd/LuEllen books, dated though they may be.
Interestingly, though, the out of date technology did not detract from my enjoyment of the story. No different, in some ways, from reading historical fiction. Put another way, technology does not drive the plot, the characters do.
Kidd, the geek, and LuEllen, a thief, are both into playing con games but usually for a good cause. They remind me of Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr and to a lesser extent his "Hitman". In this story they are trying to destroy the power structure in Longstreet, a small Mississippi River town. They, of course, hope to make sizable profit in the process while empowering the black majority and other law-abiding citizens of the town.
Unfortunately, the stakes go up precipitously when people start being murdered and their scam is close to being uncovered. The plot develops from there. There are no surprises except, perhaps, for the unmitigated brutality of those in charge of the town's fortunes.
While I've spent time in the U.S. South and have read stories of the corruption and violence in some of the more backward towns and cities there, I had a hard time believing that what went on in Longstreet could last for as long as it did. The characters were a little stereotypical but nevertheless interesting, especially the residents and rulers of Longstreet. The story's ending is also a little bit contrived but by that time I was so hooked that I was happy with what happened to the major characters.
I enjoyed this story enough so that I plan to get my hands on some of the other Kidd/LuEllen books, dated though they may be.
June 6, 2015
This is a transition novel, written at a point where the technology was not so old and established that the author could just mention it in passing and assume the reader would know what it was and how it worked, but also at the moment that the technology was so new that there was a kind of excitement about all that new potential in a future with computers in every house! The result is a book that I read with a happy feeling of nostalgia for the days of dial-up bulletin boards and dos-based pine mail, and about ten years of knowledge that I never thought I would need again. Happily I was wrong. This is a very good book, and the suspense story is a little shopworn and predictable, but the telling and the characters carry it off with real style. This book has a ton of pages, but every one was a pleasure to read.
I will however point to one huge error in the blocking, just because I was so happy to have found ONE error in a book with a lot of complicated action. In the scene where they are breaking into city hall by way of the roof, they are trapped at one point by a door that is blocked on the other side by a filing cabinet. They get past this problem by pulling the hinge pins and removing the door. Problem is, the door opened into the other room, so the hinges were on the far side of the door from them.
Ooooops. Oh well. a really fun novel.
I will however point to one huge error in the blocking, just because I was so happy to have found ONE error in a book with a lot of complicated action. In the scene where they are breaking into city hall by way of the roof, they are trapped at one point by a door that is blocked on the other side by a filing cabinet. They get past this problem by pulling the hinge pins and removing the door. Problem is, the door opened into the other room, so the hinges were on the far side of the door from them.
Ooooops. Oh well. a really fun novel.
July 29, 2016
#2 in the Kidd and Luellen series. Not as good as the Lucas Davernport or Virgil Flowers series. Kidd and Luellen are called down the Mississippi to help a friend get revenge on a corrupt, racist city where a young African American was mistakenly shot. Good pace to the story. Kidd is into reading Tarot cards, which too me didn't really do much for the story, and it is talked about a lot. Interesting characters, and plot idea. Not the best Sandford I've read, but still good.
November 19, 2019
I read The Empress File years ago and when I wanted to re-read it couldn't find a copy at home. So I ordered a used copy from an Amazon vendor and got a really clean first edition. In fact the cover shows the author as John Camp (Sandford's real name).
The Empress File is a "Kidd" novel and one of Sandford's best work. I recommend it highly.
The Empress File is a "Kidd" novel and one of Sandford's best work. I recommend it highly.
August 30, 2016
I like Sandford's Kidd and LuEllen series, but they definitely lack the gritty action of the Lucas and Virgil novels. However, the witty dialogue and well-drawn characters remain intact. There are enough plot twists to satisfy Sandford fans, and computer nerds will love these books. This particular story reminded me why I don't live in the South!
August 11, 2017
Really enjoyed this - didn't realize it was a series until a few chapters in so will need to locate the 1st book so I have a better understanding of the background between the 2 main characters. If you enjoy characters that have a few shades of grey regarding the way of the world this is definitely a series to look into.
April 27, 2021
Skip The Empress File
The one plus for this book: it’s short. It reads fast, it’s full of improbable situations, unbelievable solutions and just time-wasting junk. I like to read John Sandford, I’ve spent many hours of pure enjoyment reading his creations. Those stories had strong, credible characters; this one falls off the bus into the gutter.
The one plus for this book: it’s short. It reads fast, it’s full of improbable situations, unbelievable solutions and just time-wasting junk. I like to read John Sandford, I’ve spent many hours of pure enjoyment reading his creations. Those stories had strong, credible characters; this one falls off the bus into the gutter.
October 6, 2023
I usually LOVE John Sandford novels and fly through them. I had a hard time getting interested in this one & it dragged in the middle. It just never clicked with me. LuEllen and Kidd do a favor for ‘Bobby’, Kidd’s computer hacking guru, which involves getting a corrupt Mississippi town council out of office.
November 17, 2019
What promises to be a book about a sting on a corrupt city, is for a long time about two people smashing up the property of some seemingly nice people.
February 13, 2021
I would have liked this one a lot more if the plot was even remotely believable. It wasn't. I have higher hopes for the next one.
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