Lucas Davenport Novels

Author: John Sandford

Tags: Crime, Detective, Murder, Suspense, Thriller

I started writing this entry shortly after I created this blog as the Lucas Davenport novels make up one of my favorite series of all time. I put off finishing and publishing it as it seemed so obvious to me that these books are sooo good that everyone must have already read them, making my review totally unnecessary and irrelevant. However, having just finished reading the latest in the series (Righteous Prey) in what was, for me, a record time of two days for 403 pages, I absolutely need to say - no not say, SHOUT - something about it. So here's my updated review.

Since every one of these novels by John Sandford have probably appeared on the NY Times best sellers list and most, if not all, have most likely held the #1 spot, you are probably all familiar with this series. However, for those of you who are less than five years old, live under rocks, or confine yourselves mostly to non-crime fiction or biographies - in which case how come you're reading this - I will share my opinion of it with you. By the way, I probably could very easily research whether or not my assumption about the books appearing on the NYTBSL is true but I prefer to go by the fact that every time a new book comes out I am number 25 million on the wait list when I reserve it at my local library. Yes, they are that popular!

As I said in my first paragraph (and will probably say again many times when describing other series), I think this is my favorite book series of all time. I was lucky enough to "discover" Lucas Davenport shortly after the first book was released in 1989. I was immediately enraptured and have read every subsequent novel in the series as soon as I could get my hands on them. As of writing there are 32 books in the series and in case you forget the name of the author (John Sandford) or the protagonist (Lucas Davenport), all of the titles end with the word "Prey", so they're easy to find.

Based in Minnesota, Lucas Davenport is a smart, hard nosed, politically aware, fashion conscious cop with a singular purpose to catch the bad guy and is not afraid to cut corners. However, he is also a sensitive human being and family man and is not afraid to show trepidation in the course of the action. He is also rich, although he didn't start that way, and the way he makes his money is one of the many different sub-plots that thread their way through the series. In other words, he is a totally believable character as are all of the characters that John Sandford creates. The criminals are often not that smart, some are just situationally bad and are dealt with by the author somewhat sympathetically, and some are evil psychopaths that will give you nightmares.

The stories are often of the cat and mouse variety, where you know who the criminal is from the start and you get to learn their motivations and what's going on in their world view. In some, the identity of the perpetrator is less obvious. In all of them the procedural process that nearly always ends with the cat capturing the mouse is the essence of the story. There's a clue in that last sentence that not everything goes as planned, adding a touch of realism that isn't in most thrillers.

Sounds pretty straightforward and mundane doesn't it? Well, I've use the word "procedural" in the last paragraph pretty loosely. For Davenport and his various teammates the procedure is far from the usual. In his own words he likes to "shake things loose" and creates situations and scenarios which are often at the outer edge of legal to make things happen. And boy do they happen. Things can get very chaotic in a Sandford book.

The earlier novels are mostly based around the characters within Davenport's investigation squad, Virgil Flowers and Del Capslock being two of the most prominent. However, as Davenport's career evolves, different characters appear and take on a life of their own. Virgil Flowers' escapades have morphed into a series of their own spanning 12 books, and even Letty Davenport, Lucas's daughter, has spun off with one book published and another in the works.

I'll digress a little bit here but it does relate to this review as you will see in a minute. The first serious book I read was Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. I was in my mid-teens and didn't realize at the time that it was the abridged version, in fact I was so naive and uneducated that I didn't even know what "abridged version" meant. The book awed me and changed my life and, just to finish it, I stayed up all night. It was a few years later that I discovered the difference between the abridged version and the full version. It was about 150 pages and a lot of what had been left out was the chapters that described Dickens' characters. He would spend a whole chapter describing one person.

So where is the relevance? It's that John Sandford has the incredible ability to do the opposite. He has the knack to fully develop a character by placing the person in a situation and describing him or her through their actions and dialog and, in a few paragraphs, bingo, you have identified with the character. It's either uncanny or it's just me with a fertile imagination but I believe that, in your mind, you will quickly build an image of the person and instinctively know how they will react in the rest of the story. What this does is keep things moving along at a very fast pace and, while these are not shallow books by any measure, they are a fast read.

The storytelling, character development, and writing style in these books are all phenomenal but, for me, their real strength is the dialog. Slick, funny, and realistic it will keep you laughing out loud throughout. There are so many funny lines you won't be able to remember them all. Consequently, since my wife and I both love these books, we've worked out a method of doubling our enjoyment. Whoever reads it first cannot talk about it but once the second person starts reading they must repeat all the funny dialog so we can laugh at it together. We can keep ourselves amused like this for hours but then again, we're old.

In summary, once you start a John Sandford book you will not be able to put it down - guaranteed!

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