Here we have a pretty recent discovery for me but I think it is something quite special! John Sandford, real name John Roswell Camp, is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist turned author who has written many detective novels, beginning in 1989, and although there are a few others, he has focused on two main characters in Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers. Strangely enough, it was Virgil Flowers that I came across first and I have to admit that I wasn’t overwhelmed! I left Sandford alone after that for a few years but, for some reason, decided quite recently to have a look at the Lucas Davenport series and I haven’t looked back since! In fact, I am about to start number nineteen of a series which currently stands at twenty-nine and I am completely hooked! Interestingly, every one has a two-word title with the second word always Prey. I say that is interesting although not really all that significant!
The plots are good although pretty standard for the genre and they usually involve a psychopathic serial killer or two so nothing too special there although they are very well written as you would expect from a successful journalist. For me, the important factor is the characters or the characterisations (which may be the right word). Lucas Davenport, the main character in the Prey series is just so interesting! He is senior law enforcement officer in Minneapolis (quirky in itself, I think), educated and articulate and a millionaire thanks to a gaming business which he developed and sold. Strangely, although he has a reputation as being tough and very violent, it is easy to warm to him and his relationships with his surgeon wife and his various associates inside and outside the police force. For me, this is what really appeals about the detective fiction I read. Because there can be a sameness about the plots, it is the characters that have to be interesting and possible to relate to and even identify with. With Sandford, though, this applies to all the characters with clear pictures being drawn of them and, of course, you get to know them better and better as you work your way through the series and watch their lives developing through good and bad experiences.
At the stage I am at just now, Lucas has just moved away from the police force itself into a government role although he still has close connections with former colleagues. He and his wife, Weather, who is a surgeon are living in a new house which they seem to have designed themselves and they have a two year old baby boy and an teenage adopted daughter. There is around a nine-month gap between books in the series coming out and we have to be brought up to date with what has elapsed in his life during that period. Consequently, it is quite easy to pick up any of the books without having read the previous ones. However, as I always say, even although they stand alone, it is worth going back to the beginning, in this case “Rules of Prey” which, I accept, is one of the very few titles with more than two words! I have to say that I am really enjoying the Davenport series and I am getting through them very quickly. I don’t think it is any coincidence that John Sandford was a prize-winning journalist and his characterisations are so compelling. A recent find for me and one which I can’t recommend highly enough!