Lucas Davenport Thrillers

Lucas Davenport is the protagonist of the Prey Series (27 Book Series) books written by the brilliant crime-fiction novels author John Sandford (a.k.a John Camp, a Pulitzer-winning journalist).

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Detective Davenport

Lucas Davenport is a police detective, and not just an average everyday cop at that. He is smart, he is cunning, he is charming, in short, he is a perfect match to any criminal mind because he thinks like a master criminal himself.
I totally admire this character and am an ardent fan of John Sandford’s Prey novels.

Lucas Davenport

In John Sandford’s book, Night Prey (The Prey Series Book 6), Lucas Davenport is described as:

“Lucas was a tall man with heavy shoulders, dark-complected, square-faced, with the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. His dark hair was just touched with gray; his eyes were a startling blue. A thin white scar crossed his forehead and right eye socket, and trailed down to the corner of his mouth. He looked like a veteran athlete, a catcher or a hockey defenseman, recently retired.”

Believable setting

The stories are set in and around Minnesota making them more endearing to the locals. Ice and cold are almost tangible characters in the Prey novels. My personal favorite in this series is the very first novel: Rules of Prey (Lucas Davenport, No. 1).

Superb plots

The many romantic adventures of Lucas Davenport form a common thread in the Prey series books, making them even more enthralling.

This said, the plots are the strongest lifelines in Davenport novels. John Sandford is the best in weaving intricate plots throughout the series.

Strong characters

Lucas Davenport has friends in different varied places, Sister Elle being one of them. She was his childhood classmate and he keeps picking her mind to get the psychological angle on the cases he works on.

Lucas has his own set of loyal friends and co-detectives in the department, who often work with him in solving cases.

The most repeated characters are Del Capslock (I keep wondering if the author named this character comically, when he was working on a Dell computer and pressed caps lock 😀), Harmon Anderson, Marcy Sherrill, and Sloan (Fun Fact: Sloan does not have a first name and as commented by Lucas in one of the books, even Sloan’s wife calls him only ‘Sloan’).

Police smarts

Lucas maintains good street contacts who help him on various cases. He is also a specialist in using various kinds of guns and keeps a collection in his basement at home.

Lucas is also super-posh, driving around in a Porsche, no less. He got rich using his brain by designing games and forming his games company Davenport Simulations. He even wrote games that are used by the police as dispatch simulations for training.

Cool dude

His cool attitude even in stressful situations, wit in times of danger help him get through numerous cases brilliantly.

Lucas is especially in demand by the police department to do their press handling for dangerous cases and for damage control. He is very smooth with the press and manages to maintain great working relationships with reporters with good reach.

Romance

Lucas Davenport’s main love interest in many of the earlier books in the series, who later becomes his wife is, Weather Karkinnen, a plastic surgeon.

Another significant and quirky character featured in the Prey series is detective Virgil Flowers.

Independent thrillers

The best thing about Sandford’s writing is that all the books can be read independently and yet feel very close to the characters as if the characters are known to us forever.

Definitely makes us thirst to read more books in the series. John Sandford has also written other superb novels including the ‘Kidd’ series. Sandford’s books are brilliant pieces of crime-fiction in recent times.

Start reading the Prey series (this link has my post showing all the books chronologically)and plunge into the exciting world of solving murders.

Also read: List of Prey series novels

Buy the most famous book from this series Certain Prey.