I don't follow pop culture closely enough to say if this is a trend, but in the last month I've read two recently released mystery suspense novels with surprising villains.  This may bear watching for the future as politics is certainly downstream of culture.   I was totally surprised by John Sandford's latest Lucas Davenport novel, Silken Prey, released May, 2013.  The former newspaperman has always shown a tendency towards labeling Republicans as sexually repressed, socially out of touch businessmen and inheritors of wealth while the Democrats are the party of enlightened workers and general good guys,  Davenport, his wife and his closest proteges all vote for Democrats.   Silken Prey opens with a slimy Democrat political operative plotting after having planted a kiddie porn booby trap on the campaign office computer of an incumbent Republican US Senator locked in a close reelection battle with two weeks to go. The  Democrat opponent is a...(Read Full Post)