Detective Lucas Davenport back in 13th adventure
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Special to CNN
(CNN) -- With "Mortal Prey," bestselling author John Sandford -- the nom de plume for Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp -- tries to disprove the notion of 13 being an unlucky number. "Mortal Prey" (Putnam) is the 13th installment of a wildly successful series of thrillers featuring Lucas Davenport, the long arm of the law in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
But Davenport's appeal reaches far beyond his Midwestern enclave. Sandford's novels routinely top national bestseller lists in both hardcover and paperback, and all remain in print after more than a decade. His bookstore appearances during his tours (which average about three weeks per book) regularly draw crowds, and his backlist has sold into uncharted seven-figure territory.
Which can make it tough for Sandford to come up with new wrinkles -- for his audience and for himself.
"It's difficult for the author to maintain interest in something that's gone on for so long," he said. "The one I'm writing now is the 14th 'Prey' novel. It's hard for me to stay as completely driven as I was at the beginning."
Old characters, new wrinkles
Like its predecessors, "Mortal Prey" pits Davenport against a crafty, cold-blooded killer with a rising bloodlust -- in this case, Clara Rinker, the female free-lance mob assassin from "Certain Prey."
Fans of the series will also note the return of beleaguered FBI agents Mallard and Malone, as well as a variety of locales ranging from Cancun to St. Louis, which means devotees get to enjoy the macho Minneapolis cop's Achilles heel -- flying: "In his mind's eye, he could clearly see the razor-sharp aluminum slicing through the cabin, dismembering everybody and everything in its path. Then the fire, trying to crawl, legs missing, toward the exit ..."
Certain themes recur throughout the "Prey" series, which tries to move in some semblance of real time. This time around, an aging Davenport, now engaged to his pregnant girlfriend Weather Karkinnen, is in the middle of building a large new house for his future family (he already has one illegitimate child). There is the usual back-and-forth between Davenport and the media, which sometimes resembles an informational tennis match.
And, as always, there is the showdown between the chaotic forces of evil (in this case an unhinged Rinker) and the orderly forces of good (the methodical and relentless Davenport).
But there are some changes. Davenport has a new job -- he's now working for a state agency, which takes him out of Minneapolis -- and he's stopped sleeping around, at least as much as he used to.
"The problem was, Lucas was going through a whole series of relationships with women because I had a feeling that women readers like to read about romantic involvements ... along with the thriller aspects of the books," said Sandford. "[But] if you introduce a new female character in a series that's lasted as long as this one, [Lucas] begins to sound more like a sexual predator than a guy who's really genuinely involved with the people he's dealing with. So I decided to tone down the romantic relationships between Lucas and other women, and have him focus on one woman."
This is more serious than it sounds -- Putnam built the series around Davenport's appeal across gender lines. The cop isn't just for male readers who like tough guys. "Women love the fact that he's dangerous. He's extremely charming, but unpredictable," said Sandford's editor at Putnam, Neil Nyren.
Chaos and order
Part of that unpredictability is the way Davenport works with the media. "I have a problem with the way the media deals with a lot of law enforcement issues," Sandford said. "I also have a problem with the fact that law enforcement people, including Davenport, lie to and game the media and try to bend things into a shape that will reflect on them the best, whether or not that has anything to do with the way things should be."
Sandford cut his teeth as a general-assignment reporter, working crime stories for such newspapers as the Miami Herald (where he befriended bestselling writers Carl Hiaasen and Edna Buchanan) and the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. Both were fertile ground for future fiction.
"When I started thinking about writing fiction -- I knew I'd be writing thrillers because that's what I read -- I began consciously seeking out assignments that would put me in touch with this kind of stuff," he said. For one story he talked with about 30 killers, he said, which provided him with plenty of raw material.
But, Sandford added, Lucas Davenport isn't based on real policemen. "Some cops may disagree with me and think that [my characters] are based on them, but they aren't," he said. "He is a fictional character carefully engineered to appeal to thriller readers. There isn't anything casual or offhand about the creation of his character. I thought about it and wanted a character who's appealing and who appeals to me."
What Davenport is, however, is a symbol for order against the chaos of Sandford's various villains. Diehard fans of the series know that Davenport --besides being a womanizer and something of a loose cannon -- is a creator and planner. Davenport made a reputation (and a fortune) as a game designer in his spare time; on the force, he has created a mini-intelligence unit within the Minneapolis PD.
It's no wonder Sandford opens "Mortal Prey" with Davenport enjoying the rising framework of his new house (as he has opened previous novels with Davenport building sheds or shingling roofs), setting the stage for his continuing combat between order and chaos.
"When I was reporting crime ... I never had the sense of clockwork conspiracies, or some kind of imposing order of evil. What I sensed was things just sort of falling apart," said Sandford. "That's my sense of how crime works, that it's not any kind of calculated evil driven by the devil, but just control disintegrating. Things fall apart and happen out of stupidity and carelessness. Davenport does represent order in this."
