Should you ever be in the market for what is known as a page-turner, you might want to give John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport series of thrillers a try.
He’s been writing them since 1989’s Rules of Prey, although I’ve only been reading them for the last three or four years. There are 35 books in the series so far, and I’m only about halfway through them.
These fall into the category of police procedural thrillers, and they are most definitely not whodunits, although Sandford often does conceal the identity of the culprit from the reader until he’s ready to spring it as a delicious surprise.
The main character, Lucas Davenport, goes through a lot of changes as the series progresses, both professionally and personally. He begins the series as a part of the Minneapolis police force, but after a few novels he gets fired for political reasons, and after a few more gets rehired when the political regime changes.
Similarly, he’s a bit of a womanizer, but only a bit, and he does make an effort to settle down, but because of his job, he finds that difficult. Still, I like the way Sandford develops the character through the series, although given that the books are thrillers and Davenport is constantly chasing deranged serial killers, he is on the receiving end of more injuries than a normal mortal might reasonably be expected to handle.
Other characters come and go, but one of the mainstays is Davenport’s life-long best friend (they were in kindergarten together), Sister Mary Joseph, alias Elle Kruger, who teaches psychology when she’s not giving Lucas advice on his latest case or just plain putting him in his place. I like Sister Mary Joseph a lot, except when she goes off to pray to Jesus. Blah! Oh yeah, Lucas himself used to be a Catholic but hasn’t been for years; no reason given.
It isn’t safe to know Lucas. Practically everybody who is close to Lucas, whether Sister Mary Joseph, or a casual girlfriend, or whoever, becomes a target of one of the culprits that Lucas is chasing down.
As I said, the books tend to be real page-turners, and somehow Sandford has kept the plots all very different, at least the ones that I’ve read so far. And there are always twists that I didn’t see coming, along with one or two that I did.
He usually starts off his first chapter with the commission of a crime, following along in the mind of the culprit, sometimes naming the killer, sometimes not. After that he mostly follows Lucas Davenport, although with an occasional chapter devoted to seeing what the culprit is up to.
One thing that almost all his killers have in common is they go too far. In an attempt to cover up what they’ve done, or to kill off a potential witness, almost always a witness who really is no threat to them, they end up leaving the clues that lead to their downfall.
Sandford liberally peppers his books with brand names (Diet Cokes) and actual Minnesota place and street names so you know they’re taking place in the real world. More than that, as the books were written over a period of years, decades, you can sometimes follow the pace of technology. For example, he initially refers to “cellular” phones in several novels and then in the middle of a book he switches over to “cell” phones. Then in the 2000s someone gives Lucas an iPod. Remember those? Alas, his taste in music sucks.
On the con side, very often the killings are particularly grisly and sometimes the body count is rather high. But then again, these are books, so you don’t have the director flashing a technicolor closeup of the bloody scenes into your face. And Sandford never goes overboard in his descriptions. But at least one time he did kill off a character that really had me upset, and I still haven’t forgiven him for that, even though I sorta realized from the very introduction of that character that he was probably mainly there to be bumped off.
Oh, and you can always recognize a Lucas Davenport book: they all have “Prey” in the title. But if you’re gonna read them, I suggest reading them in sequence so you can follow the character development. There are several web sites that list the books in order, like this one. And the Lucas Davenport books aren’t the only ones that John Sandford has written.
Once again, Rules of Prey is the first.
By the way, the one that I’m reading right now, Wicked Prey, the 19th in the series, takes place during the 2008 Republican presidential convention and Lucas gets involved in some very messy political machinations, which, of course, end up involving murder. But there’s also a secondary plot revolving around Letty, his 15-year-old ward, whom he acquired several books previously. Lucas gets this rather disturbing phone call:
He flicked open the phone and said, “Yeah?”
Jennifer Carey said, “I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you. If you let on that I’m the one who told you, I’ll kill you. I’m serious.”
“If I have to go to court . . .”
“It’s personal,” Carey said. “Sort of.”
“All right. What?”
“Letty took off this morning before I got here,” Carey said. “So ten minutes ago I was talking to Lois Cline . . . you know Lois?”
“Vaguely. Looks like a pencil with a paintbrush on her head?”
“Yes. Lois said that Letty has been out trolling downtown St. Paul, looking for a hooker, who she said was a classmate,” Carey said. “Lois wasn’t really sure if she was telling the truth, but warned her not to mess around with any hookers.”
“Aw . . .”
“That’s not the good part, yet. An hour later, Letty flagged her down, and she’s got the girl with her. Sure enough, this other kid’s a hooker,” Carey said. “Letty even got her talking about it. You know, the street. Letty’s idea, apparently, is that she could interview an underage hooker about giving blow jobs to Republicans.”
Lucas thought he felt a vein pop out in his temple. “Aw, for Christ’s sakes.”
Oh, but don’t worry, the plot doesn’t really revolve around Republicans getting blow jobs from hookers; it’s a lot more convoluted than that.
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