Walking the Nile

By Levison Wood. (Atlantic Monthly Press, 338 pages, $26.)

In becoming the first person to walk the Nile River's length of more than 4,000 miles, explorer and ex-British soldier Levison Wood does more than cross footsteps with noted Victorian predecessors such as David Livingstone and Richard Burton.

He also traces a nine-month journey through the contradictions of African life — cacophonous cities and expanses of barely trod landscapes offset by the greed and corruption of those with power. He treks past haunting reminders of Rwandan genocide. He yields extortionate fees for supplies. He deplores national preserves stripped illegally for timber or wildlife. He laments the taming of stretches of the river for hydro power. He threads his way through tribal and civil conflict, counseled by a changing cast of local guides.

The Nile cedes its wonders grudgingly. Wood wades paddies and hummocky swamps for days. One of two freelance journalists who join him dies within days of hyperthermia as temperatures hit 120 degrees in the Ugandan savannah. The small party with which he crosses the Saharan desert comes perilously close to expiring for lack of water. He learns to dodge a rhino charge by climbing upward. He and a guide run a gauntlet on a strip of beach as crocodiles dash out of the underbrush.

Wood survives these trials to bring us the initial first-person account of the Nile from spring to delta with a travelogue vivid enough to feel the burning sands in our soles.

STEVE BRANDT, metro reporter

"Extreme Prey" by John Sandford

Extreme Prey

By John Sandford. (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 406 pages, $29.)

Detective Lucas Davenport has retired from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but he isn't slowing down — and neither does the action in this fast-paced thriller. The plot certainly is topical: During the presidential primaries, a candidate hears a rumor that rogue members of an anti-government group are planning to assassinate one of his opponents. But when he tries to alert people, everyone shrugs off the alarmist warning as an attempt to scare off the opponent. So he enlists Davenport to verify the rumor and, if it turns out to be true, track down the would-be killers. The readers know that the rumor is true, and because we're being updated on the assassins' activities, we also know that Davenport is running out of time to stop them.

Sandford sprinkles in just enough character development that someone encountering Davenport for the first time can get a feeling for him, but the narrative doesn't get waylaid by extensive backgrounding, which would be unnecessary for the regular readers of the "Prey" series, anyway. As usual, the author's primary focus is on keeping the plot zipping along in high gear. Add a hammock under a shady tree, and you've got a quintessential summer read.

Sandford will read at 7 p.m. April 29 at Barnes & Noble, Har Mar Mall, Roseville, and at 7 p.m. April 30 at Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls.

JEFF STRICKLER, assistant features editor