So do these disk labels give a better indication of a title than the disks for the previous novels? Let's take a look:

Well, they do mention "Crow", so maybe that could be worked in. It wasn't of course, but the potential was there [3].

The author talked to the editor, and the editor said that they wanted a title that shared a "theme" with Rules of Prey. Since that was the only other novel in the series, the title theme wasn't really established. There were two clear ways it could go: "Rules" or "Prey". The author chose the wrong one.

The initial draft of the novel (which I'll discuss in more detail below) was titled Rules of Winter, after the name of the main bad guy, Winter Love, and after the fact that it takes place in a brutally cold winter [4]. When the book was revised, Winter Love got changed to Shadow Love, and the book's title went from Rules of Winter to Shadow Prey.

I don't believe the author had any say in the Winter / Shadow change. It's one of those publishing house decisions that just happens. I suspect it happens more than the general public knows.

Most of the setup remains the same: the Crows and their allies kill a progression of targets who have had negative effects on the various Indian tribes [6]. The targets escalate in each case, with the final one being a raid on a temporary FBI operations center. In that raid, they kill everyone there. The secretaries, the analysts, and some higher-ups. Del, who happens to be there, is killed as well. The Crows and their allies all die in the firefight, with the exception of one of the Crow brothers, who escapes to meet his own end.

In this version, they're doing what they're doing as a way of calling attention to the problems the Indian nations are facing under the US goverment. They use terrorist tactics because they view the US as using the same on them. They are not doing it to get revenge on a particular person. They're doing it to get revenge on an entire institution, and to gain sympathy for their cause.

A big problem with this approach is that, while the Crows have valid points and grudges, terrorist actions of the sort they take are not the kind of thing that would get them sympathy. In the FBI office raid, a number of the people there are non-agent employees, staffers who have done absoutely nothing wrong. Del, who is only there to relay information, isn't in the FBI at all. He doesn't even shoot back, his last words being "Wait..."

And that leads to a discussion that really bogs down a thriller: when does someone cross the line from being activist to being terrorist? When they kill innocents? When they kill anybody? When they break a law? Where do you draw the line? For the modern reading public, the bad guys need to be bad. They can have texture, they can have depth, but for a thriller to work, you can't put forth any serious argument in their favor [7].

So the book changed. Shadow Love was added as a psychotic element: the one who was willing to do outright terrorist actions for their cause. Even the Crows don't think he's really a good sort. And the Crows mission went from being against anti-Indian institutions to being a revenge trip against the FBI director for personal reasons [8].

This version, the final one, still had many of the same problems. The Crows (renamed Sam and Aaron) weren't bad enough. They were too rational about what they were doing and why. As I mentioned before, you can't get away with that in a thriller. To this day, Shadow Prey is the fan-least-favorite of the series [9].

There were other, smaller changes as well.

In the original version, Sam and Aaron Crow were Spiritual and Practical Crow. The names were changed when someone said that Spiritual Crow and Practical Crow were too stereotypical. There's still a nod to the original names in Chapter 3 (page 30 of the US paperback).

Also changed: one of the Crow brothers was dying from a degenerative nerve disease [10]. He had probably about a year or less left, and that gave what they were doing a deadline. That was removed, in favor of having the events evolve naturally.

Finally, the ending was odd, and feels like soemthing from Winter Prey, although that book came out three years after this one. After the FBI raid, one of the Crows gets away and flees north, attempting to get to Canada. He almost gets there, getting as far as Grand Portage, which is right at the Minnesota / Canada border. He doesn't manage to get away: He's lost his car, he's stuck in a hellish blizzard, he's got no survival gear.

When the morning comes, the cops find him frozen — actually covered with a thin layer of ice — to the Witch Tree, an important symbolic site for the Indians up there [11]. What he's done is turn his death into the start of some kind of legend.

That had to be taken out, of course. No place for it in a crime thriller.

The first, which make up probably about two thirds of the responses, are very much in favor of the book. They say that the author obviously has had experience with real Indian issues and problems, and that he describes their plight with unexpected sympathy and accuracy. One reader says:

The remaining third of the emails are from what therefore must be offended "true believers". Typically they'll suggest that the author should join Aryan Nation or the KKK if he isn't a member already, since it's obvious that he's an Indian-hating racist of the worst sort, and one who has never bothered to study the culture he has portrayed as hopelessly evil. I usually don't respond to those emails.