John Sandford (novelist)


John Sandford, real name John Roswell Camp, is a New York Times best-selling author, American novelist, a former journalist and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.

Early life

Camp was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the son of Anne Agnes and Roswell Sandford Camp. His mother's family was German and Lithuanian. He received a bachelor's degree in American history and literature and a master's in journalism, both from the University of Iowa.
From 1971 to 1978, Camp wrote for The Miami Herald. In 1978, he moved to Minneapolis and started writing for The Saint Paul Pioneer Press as a features reporter; in 1980 he became a daily columnist. That year, he was a Pulitzer finalist for a series of stories on Native American culture. In 1985, during the Midwest farm crisis, he wrote a series entitled "Life on the Land: an American farm family," which followed a typical southwest Minnesota farm family through the course of a full year. For that work, he won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for Non-Deadline Feature Writing. He worked part-time at the Pioneer Press in 1989 and left the next year.
Camp is an avid fiction reader himself. When asked in 2018 "What's your favorite book of all time?" by the New York Times, he responded, "An impossible question. If you put a gun to my head—say a.40-caliber Walther PPQ, or maybe a.45 ACP Colt Gold Cup—I'd say The Once and Future King, by T. H. White." Both weapons he mentioned make appearances in many of his novels.
Camp is a personal friend and hunting companion of fellow Minnesota author Chuck Logan.

Fiction writer

In 1989, Camp wrote two novels that would each spawn a popular series. The Fool's Run was published under his own name, but the publisher asked him to provide a pseudonym for Rules of Prey, so it was published under the name John Sandford. After the "Prey" series proved to be more popular, with its charismatic protagonist Lucas Davenport, The Fool's Run and all of its sequels were published under John Sandford.
In 2007, Camp started a third series, featuring Virgil Flowers, who is a supporting character in some of the "Prey" novels, including Invisible Prey and Storm Prey.

Prey series

  1. Rules of Prey
  2. Shadow Prey
  3. Eyes of Prey
  4. Silent Prey
  5. Winter Prey
  6. Night Prey
  7. Mind Prey
  8. Sudden Prey
  9. Secret Prey
  10. Certain Prey
  11. Easy Prey
  12. Chosen Prey
  13. Mortal Prey
  14. Naked Prey
  15. Hidden Prey
  16. Broken Prey
  17. Invisible Prey
  18. Phantom Prey
  19. Wicked Prey
  20. Storm Prey
  21. Buried Prey
  22. Stolen Prey
  23. Silken Prey
  24. Field of Prey
  25. Gathering Prey
  26. Extreme Prey
  27. Golden Prey
  28. Twisted Prey
  29. Neon Prey
  30. Masked Prey

    Lucas Davenport

Lucas Davenport is the protagonist of the "Prey" series. In the first three novels, he is a maverick detective with the Minneapolis Police Department, a lieutenant acting independently, running a network of street contacts. At the end of Eyes of Prey, he's forced to resign to avoid excessive force charges, partly due to his knowledge of the connection of a senior police officer to that case. He returns in Night Prey as a deputy chief, running his own intelligence unit. Beginning with Naked Prey, Davenport is an investigator for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, acting occasionally as a special troubleshooter for the governor of Minnesota in politically sensitive cases. He serves in that capacity through Gathering Prey, at the end of which he quits working for the BCA, later becoming a United States marshal. He's known for his unorthodox and manipulative behavior as a detective, reminiscent of "Dirty Harry" Callahan. He is not a leader, but a loner who works with a small circle of capable, straight police friends.
The novel Mind Prey was sold for a TV movie, and Davenport was portrayed by Eriq LaSalle. Another of the novels, Certain Prey, was adapted into a movie in 2011 by USA Network starring Mark Harmon as Davenport.
Description
Davenport is described as a tall, slender, wide-shouldered man with a "permanent tan" that gives his very blue eyes a kind expression, contradicted by the "chilly" smile of a predator, particularly a wolverine. Dark-haired, but streaked with gray, Davenport has a face marked by a fine scar from his hairline to the right corner of his mouth that gives him "a raffish air" and also "a touch of innocence, like Errol Flynn in Captain Blood". In the very first Davenport book, the hero is described as "slender and dark-complexioned, with straight black hair going grey at the temples and a long nose over a crooked smile. One of his central upper incisors had been chipped and he never had it capped. He might have been an Indian except for his blue eyes." His tooth was chipped during an ice hockey match in his youth. His amateur career had peaked as first-line defenseman for the Golden Gophers of the University of Minnesota. Davenport has suffered a few bullet and knife wounds over the course of his career, and is permanently tan no more.
Davenport is streetwise, has a wide network of contacts among all levels of society in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and on occasions finds solutions to criminal investigations by thinking like a criminal. He is also skilled at using computers and other technological sources of information. In recent years as a senior officer of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, he has been able to call on the services of several specialized research professionals. Beyond these things, he is lucky, a characteristic mentioned in more than one book.
He is not above skirting the law and accepted procedures to move a case forward. He even uses news media contacts to leak secrets to freak out criminal suspects or motivate laggard senior officialdom. Unforeseen civilian deaths sometimes result from these schemes. Davenport is a police celebrity, having shot and killed many suspects in the line of duty. Quite apart from those deaths caused in spontaneous gunfights, Davenport has been suspected—appropriately—of engineering some outcomes so that the death of a miscreant is virtually certain. Unusually for a police officer, he has more than once been a target of assassination attempts by criminals; his numerous contacts in the media consider him a good interview, but editors persistently criticize his violence. Davenport feels no hesitation about killing defenseless criminals who present no threat to him. In the first Davenport novel, Rules of Prey, he makes a mechanical device to create the illusion that he is in a gunfight when he kills Louis Vullion, aka "the Maddog," the criminal in that matter. He does not want Vullion to die painlessly. That was his sixth police killing. The total today is 10. While Davenport is thought of as lucky, it's a remarkable thing that any criminal who wishes him harm can find his home and attack it, even though he does not have a public phone listing.
Davenport is independently wealthy, having achieved success first through the creation of Dungeons & Dragons-style role playing games. He started and later sold his own software company, Davenport Simulations, which first created personal computer games for private users, and later, emergency simulations for training police and other emergency workers. After taking the company public, he sells his personal shares and nets approximately $10,000,000. He dresses fashionably, favors European-cut clothing, and drives his personal Porsche 911 and Nissan truck or van while on duty. The Nissan was replaced by a Lexus SUV in Broken Prey. Early on, he was depicted as a womanizer, fathering a daughter, Sarah, out of wedlock from a running affair with blonde television news reporter Jennifer Carey. Sarah lives with her mother and a stepfather, and Davenport visits her frequently. As the series progresses, Davenport settles down with and eventually marries the highly paid maxillofacial surgeon Weather Karkinnen, who in Winter Prey saved his life by performing an emergency tracheotomy with what Lucas called a "jackknife." The couple have a son, Samuel Kalle Davenport, called Sam in the novels, and in Buried Prey, Dr. Karkinnen is advanced in pregnancy with a daughter. Living with the Davenports is Letty West, a once-feral teenage girl encountered in Naked Prey. Lucas and Weather formally adopt Letty in 2008, close to the time of the Republican nominating convention in that year, an event that prompts a detailed Davenport investigation, and Letty then changes her name to Letty Davenport.
Before that, however, Davenport had numerous sexual encounters with suspects, victims, and fellow officers, including Detective Sergeant Marcy Sherrill, a subordinate, and Lily Rothenburg, a detective lieutenant of the New York Police Department. By Buried Prey, Sherrill has succeeded Davenport as chief of detectives in Minneapolis, and Davenport is close to his 50th birthday. At the end of Wicked Prey, he and Weather adopt Letty, now 14 and an aspiring television reporter mentored by Jennifer Carey—Davenport's old lover, and mother of Sarah.
Davenport has a reputation as a "gun freak" and at the start of the series owns thirteen - a 9mm H&K P7 with a 13-round magazine, a 9mm Beretta 92F, a small.25 automatic of unstated make that he wears in an ankle holster as a hideout gun, two Colt Gold Cup.45 ACP competition pistols, three.22 pistols and four recovered street guns including a Charter Arms.38. In the flashback section of Buried Prey Davenport carried a Glock pistol as his sidearm when in uniform and a Smith & Wesson Model 40 revolver in plain-clothes. In Rules of Prey, Davenport uses one of his street guns, a Smith & Wesson Model 39, to fabricate a self-defense justification for executing serial killer Louis Vullion.
Lucas's other weapons include a Browning Citori over-and-under 20 gauge shotgun, a.243 deer rifle of unstated make and model, and a Colt Magnum Carry.357 revolver. In two earlier two books, Rules of Prey and Shadow Prey, his standard sidearm is the P7, but in Eyes of Prey he later adopts a.45 Smith & Wesson of unstated model; he retains the P7 as a "dress gun" for off duty carry. In Silent Prey, he uses the Colt Gold Cup as his sidearm while in New York. As of Certain Prey onward, his usual sidearm is a customized.45 Colt Gold Cup, carried with the chamber empty; something that gives him problems when his left arm is in a cast. In Invisible Prey, he has a cache containing two "cold" pistols with magazines, a homemade silencer that fits none of his guns, an old-fashioned lead-and-leather sap, a hydraulic door-spreader that he'd picked up from a burglary site, $5,000 in $20 bills in a paper bank envelope, a pill bottle of amphetamines, a box of surgical gloves, and a battery-powered lock rake. In Buried Prey, the cache contains at least the rake along with a ring of bump keys, a small crowbar, a pair of white cotton garden gloves and a LED headlamp. By Storm Prey, he has acquired, and uses, a detachable magazine Beretta shotgun of unstated model, probably an M3P. In Stolen Prey, Lucas uses a 9mm Beretta 92F as his main sidearm, presumably because he had a cast on his left arm that would present an issue if he needed to insert a shell into the chamber of his customized.45 Colt Gold Cup. He switches back to his customized.45 Colt Gold Cup in the next book, Silken Prey.
In the 28th book, Twisted Prey, Davenport has again switched sidearm, this time to the Walther PPQ pistol in.40 S&W. He also possesses, but doesn't use, a.40 Glock of a model issued to the Marshals Service, presumably a Glock 22 or 23. He doesn't normally carry a secondary or backup firearm or the usual Marshals Service telescopic baton.
Letty has two weapons, both.22 rifles. One is a single-shot Harrington & Richardson in.22 Short and the other—bought for her by Lucas after the H&R was confiscated by the police after Letty's biological mother was killed by a crooked cop who got shot by Letty before escaping—a Remington pump-action firing.22 Long Rifle. In Buried Prey she and Lucas practice shooting together with the Colt and Beretta pistols. In Stolen Prey, Letty uses Lucas's customized.45 Colt Gold Cup to kill two would-be assassins.
Personal
Davenport has a strong interest in reading, poetry, and war gaming. As the series develops, Davenport exhibits a number of anxiety disorders, including mood depression and chronic fear of flying on fixed-wing aircraft. Paradoxically, he is not afraid of helicopter flight. His best friend is Elle Krueger, a Catholic nun who is also a professor of psychology. Davenport often receives assistance from Krueger psychologically profiling criminals.
Davenport refers to himself as "mostly a Democrat." He has four children: Sarah, Sam, Letty, and a newborn daughter, Gabrielle, with Weather.
"Prey" author John Sandford told The New York Post in June 2002 that he first thought of Davenport as a sociopath: "He had a problem with women. Even when he was in a relationship, he'd some women. But then he changed, mellowed out.... I want him to have a happy ending. I don't want him to wind up a bitter, lonely guy."
In September 2004, he told the Budapest newspaper Vasárnapi Hírek: "I've always thought of him as a kind of sociopath who is slightly warped. Of course, Davenport changed a lot throughout the stories, he became calmer...." Later, the promiscuous young Davenport was presented as a married man because "I wanted to show that Davenport is capable of love and he doesn't just collect women, like in the beginning." Both statements appear in the www.johnsandford.org website.

Kidd series

  1. The Fool's Run, by John Camp; reissued 1996 as by Sandford
  2. The Empress File, by John Camp; reissued 1995 as by Sandford
  3. The Devil's Code
  4. The Hanged Man's Song
Kidd also has a prominent role in Silken Prey and Extreme Prey.

Virgil Flowers series

  1. Dark of the Moon
  2. Heat Lightning
  3. Rough Country
  4. Bad Blood
  5. Shock Wave
  6. Mad River
  7. Storm Front
  8. Deadline
  9. Escape Clause
  10. Deep Freeze
  11. Holy Ghost
  12. Bloody Genius

    Virgil Flowers

Virgil Flowers is described as tall, lean, late thirties, three times divorced, with long hair and often wears t-shirts featuring rock bands. Virgil works at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Prior to the BCA he was in the Army and the military police, then the police in Saint Paul. Lucas Davenport, main character of the Prey series of books, recruited him into the BCA.
Virgil is an avid outdoorsman who loves fishing, and is often towing his boat, even when on duty. He's also a writer for outdoor and hunting magazines, as well as a photographer.
Despite working in law enforcement he often does not carry his weapon while investigating crimes, until it becomes necessary.

Singular Menace series (with Michele Cook)

  1. Uncaged
  2. Outrage
  3. Rampage

    Other fiction books

1986, Pulitzer Prize for Feature. Series of articles on Farming Family. Pioneer Press Dispatch
1986 Distinguished Writing Award. American Society of Newspaper Editors.
1980, Pulitzer Prize Nomination. Series of articles on Native Americans. St Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch