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This page lists books that feature the police detective Lucas Davenport.

Rules of Prey

John Sandford

1989

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"The maddog murderer who is terrorizing the Twin Cities is two things: insane and extremely intelligent. He kills for the pleasure of it and thoroughly enjoys placing elaborate obstacles to keep police befuddled. Each clever move he makes is another point of pride. But when the brilliant Lieutenant Lucas Davenport--a dedicated cop and a serial killer's worst nightmare--is brought in to take up the investigation, the maddog suddenly has an adversary worthy of his genius."

Shadow Prey

John Sandford

1990

A Lucas Davenport novel.

" A slumlord butchered in Minneapolis...A rising political star executed in Manhattan...A judge slashed to death in Oklahoma City... Each victim has a history of bad behavior, but the only thing the killings have in common is the murder weapon--a Native American ceremonial knife--and a trail of blood that leads to an embodiment of evil known only as Shadow Love. Recruited to be the lethal hand of a terrorist campaign, Shadow Love has his own bloody agenda, one he will do anything to achieve. Enlisted to find him are Minneapolis police lieutenant Lucas Davenport and New York City police officer Lily Rothenburg. But despite the countrywide carnage they needn't look far. Because Shadow Love is right behind them."

Eyes of Prey

John Sandford

1991

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"The death of the doctor's wife horrifies the Twin Cities, especially what the killer did to her eyes. A report comes in of a troll-like man near the murder scene, his face a patchwork of scars, but that bizarre clue is all Lieutenant Lucas Davenport has to go on as he attempts to sort out the murder. Still trying to recover from a pair of particularly brutal cases, bone-weary, his nerves fraying, Davenport isn't sure he's up to it — until it happens again, the same savagery, the same mutilation of the eyes, and he realizes he has no choice. Little by little, Davenport is drawn into the web of a man of extraordinary intelligence and evil, a master manipulator fascinated with all aspects of death: the dark mirror of Davenport's own soul. As the hunt winds through darker and ever more frightening events, Davenport knows there is no turning back. This is the case that will lift him back to life — or push him irrevocably over the edge."

Silent Prey

John Sandford

1992

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Dr. Mike Bekker, a psychotic pathologist, is back on the streets, doing what he does best murdering one helpless victim after another. Lucas Davenport knows he should have killed Bekker when he had the chance. Now he has a second opportunity and the time to hesitate is through."

Winter Prey

John Sandford

1993

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"The Iceman is Lucas Davenport's most determined foe - a serial killer driven to cover his brutal tracks with blood. Sandford again creates almost unbearable suspense as we wait for the Ice Man's razor-sharp corn knife to strike. Winter Prey unfolds in the cold and driving snow of the north country, the perfect setting for the chilling terror caused by the Ice Man, a killer who knows Lucas' every move - a coldly brilliant madman who can't be stopped."

Night Prey

John Sandford

1994

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"After a two-year break, Minneapolis detective Lucas Davenport is back on the force. As Deputy Chief, his first problem is acerbic state investigator Meagan Connell, who is determined to prove a link between a series of particularly brutal attacks on women. The more Davenport looks into it, the more he suspects that Meagan is right to fear the worst. Somewhere out there, spying on his unknowing victims at their most intimate moments, lurks a killer of unusual skill and savagery – and he’s only just getting warmed up."

Mind Prey

John Sandford

1995

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"It was raining when Andi left the parent-teacher meeting with her two daughters, and she was distracted. She didn't notice the red van parked beside her, or the van door slide open. The last thing she did notice was the hand reaching out from her and the menacing voice from the past. When Lucas Davenport hears that psychiatrist Andi Manette and her daughters have been kidnapped, he knows instinctively that he's about to tackle one of his worst ever cases. For this time, Davenport has truly met his match - a nemesis more intelligent, and more depraved, than any he has tracked before. A pure, wanton killer who knows more about mind games than Davenport himself."

Sudden Prey

John Sandford

1996

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"After a vicious female bank robber named Candy dies in a shootout with police, her violent associates vow revenge, targeting the loved ones of the police officers involved, and it is up to Lucas Davenport to stop the nightmarish killings."

Secret Prey

John Sandford

1998

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"A wealthy banker is dead shot once in the chest during a hunting trip There are many reasons for him to be killed and many people who would do the deed But who did Lucas Davenport has an idea But this routine murder investigation is about to turn into something different A cat and mouse game with a killer who does not hesitate to take the fight to Lucas himself and those he loves."

Certain Prey

John Sandford

1999

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Clara Rinker is twenty-eight, beautiful, charmingly southern--and the best hit woman in the business. She just goes about her business, collects her money, and goes home. Her latest hit sounds simple: a defense attorney wants a rival eliminated. No problem--until a witness survives. Clara usually knows how to deal with loose ends: cut them off, one by one, until they're all gone. This time, there's one loose end that's hard to shake. Lucas Davenport has no idea of the toll this case is about to take on him. Clara knows his weak spots. She knows how to penetrate them, and how to use them. And when a woman like Clara has the advantage, no one is safe."

Easy Prey

John Sandford

2000

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"In life she was a high-profile model. In death she is the focus of a media firestorm that's demanding action from Lucas Davenport. One of his own men is a suspect in her murder. But when a series of bizarre, seemingly unrelated slayings rock the city, Davenport suspects a connection that runs deeper than anyone had imagined--one that leads to an ingenious killer more ruthless than anyone had feared."

Chosen Prey

John Sandford

2001

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Art history professor James Qatar has a hobby: he takes secret photographs of women to fuel more elaborate fantasies. When he's alone. Behind locked doors. Then one day, he goes a step further and... well, one thing leads to another. Qatar has no choice. He has to kill her. And you know something? He likes it. When Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport takes the case, he assumes it'll be straightforward police work. He couldn't be more wrong. As the investigation trail takes some unexpected turns, it becomes clear that nothing is straightforward about this killer, his victims, or his motives. And to stop him Lucas has no choice but to walk right into his lair."

Mortal Prey

John Sandford

2002

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Clara Rinker is a pleasant, soft-spoken, low-key Southerner. She's also the best hitwoman in the business. Lucas Davenport should know - she almost killed him. That was then and this is now. Clara is retired and living in Mexico with her boyfriend, the son of a local drug lord. But her new life is shattered when a sniper's bullet narrowly misses her and kills her boyfriend. The boy's father vows vengeance, but Rinker knows something he doesn't: the boy wasn't the target - she was. Now she is going to have to disappear to find the killer herself. The FBI and DEA draft Lucas Davenport to help track down the missing assassin, and with his fiance deep in wedding preparations, he's really just as happy to go - but he has no idea what he's getting into. For Rinker is as unpredictable as ever, and between her, her old bosses in the St. Louis mob, the Mexican druglord, and the combined, sometimes warring, arms of U.S. law enforcement, this is one case that will get more dangerous as it goes along."

Naked Prey

John Sandford

2003

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Lucas Davenport has a new job - a trouble-shooter on the cases that are too complicated or politically touchy for others to handle. He's married now, and a new father, all of which is fine with him: he doesn't mind being a family man. But he is a little worried. If there's one thing Lucas Davenport knows, it's that for every bit of peace you get, you have to pay - and he's waiting for the bill. It comes in the form of two people found hanging from a tree, in the woods of northern Minnesota. What makes it particularly sensitive is that the bodies are those of a black man and a white woman, and they're naked. Lynching is the word that everybody's trying not to say - but, as Lucas begins to discover, the murders are not, in fact, what they appear to be. And there is worse - much, much worse - to come."

Hidden Prey

John Sandford

2004

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Theories abound when a Russian gets himself killed on the shore of Lake Superior--shot with fifty-year-old bullets. But when it turns out he had very high government connections, state troubleshooter Lucas Davenport gets the call. Well, Lucas and a mysterious Russian cop with secrets all her own. Together, they'll follow a trail back to another place and another time, and battle the shadows they discover there--shadows that turn out to be both very real and very deadly."

Broken Prey

John Sandford

2005

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"The first woman is found on the riverbank. The second in an isolated farmhouse. Both have been savagely beaten, the skin flayed from their bodies, their throats cut. For both victims, there's a DNA match. Charlie Pope, a convicted sex offender recently released from mental hospital, has cut off his leg bracelet and disappeared. Now all Davenport has to do is find him. But something about this case doesn't smell right. The killings were calculated and methodical. Pope on the other hand is of low mental intelligence, incapable of the forethought and planning these murders would require. All the evidence points to Pope - but Davenport knows it just doesn't fit. Can he prove his instincts are right, and track down a killer as cunning as he is deranged?"

Invisible Prey

John Sandford

2007

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"In the richest neighbourhood of Minneapolis, two elderly women lie murdered in their home, beaten to death with a metal pipe, the rooms ransacked, only small items stolen. It's clearly a random break-in by someone looking for money to buy drugs. But as he looks more closely, Lucas Davenport begins to wonder if the items are actually so small or the victims so random, if there might not be some invisible agenda at work here. Gradually, a pattern begins to emerge - and it will lead Davenport to somewhere he next expected. Which is too bad, because the killers - and there is more than one of them - the killers are expecting him."

Phantom Prey

John Sandford

2008

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"A widow comes home to her large house in a wealthy, exclusive suburb to find blood on the walls, no body — and her college-age daughter missing. She's always known that her daughter ran with a bad bunch. What did she call them — Goths? Freaks is more like it, running around with all that makeup and black clothing, listening to that awful music, so attracted to death. And now this. But the police can't find the girl, alive or dead, and the widow truly panics. There's someone she knows, a surgeon named Weather Davenport, whose husband is a big deal with the police, and she implores Weather to get her husband directly involved. Lucas gets in only reluctantly — but then when a second Goth is slashed to death in Minneapolis, he starts working it hard. The clues don't seem to add up, though. And then there's the young Goth who keeps appearing and disappearing: Who is she? Where does she come from and, more important, where does she vanish to? And why does Lucas keep getting the sneaking suspicion that there is something else going on here."

Wicked Prey

John Sandford

2009

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Having spent the past two years in hiding following a daring and successful heist, a big -time robber is back in Minneapolis, having spotted the opportunity for an even greater steal. It's a couple of weeks before the big Republican party convention: thousands of people spending cash, which is flowing into a relatively inadequate Brinks warehouse, protected by only three or four armed guards. The robber's plan is to distract the cops by manipulating and alerting them to a possible assassination attempt. Lucas Davenport meanwhile has problems of his own, targeted by a psychopathic pimp, who blames Davenport for the fact he's in a wheelchair. Only it's not Davenport he's going after; it's his innocent daughter, Letty."

Storm Prey

John Sandford

2010

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"When a gang carry out a daring drugs raid on a hospital pharmacy, during which several staff are injured and one medical orderly is brutally killed, the Minneapolis police department can only conclude that it must have been an inside job. For Lucas Davenport, this case is about to get personal. Weather Karkinnen, Lucas's surgeon wife, was due to perform a high-profile operation on the day of the raid, and as an unwitting observer of the criminals' desperate getaway, she is now in grave danger. As the culprits embark on a series of vicious murders in an attempt to silence any witnesses, it becomes apparent that a city gangster ring known as 'The Seed' is behind the attacks. With the body-count rising, Davenport knows that time is running out to identify the inside plant in the hospital before the gang catches up with Weather once and for all."

Buried Prey

John Sandford

2011

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"When a whole block is torn down in central Minneapolis to make way for a new housing development, an unpleasant surprise is unearthed. The bodies of two girls, wrapped in plastic, are discovered underneath an old house. It looks like they've been down there a long time. Lucas Davenport knows exactly how long. In 1985, Davenport was a young cop just about to be promoted out of uniform, despite a reputation for playing fast and loose with the rules. A superb undercover guy, he was part of the massive police effort that followed the kidnapping of two girls who were never found again, dead or alive. The searches turned up nothing, so when the suspected kidnapper was killed in a shoot-out, the case was closed. But not for Davenport. He'd gotten deep into the case, and while he was convinced the suspect knew something, he didn't think he was the perpetrator - something just felt off. He argued hard about it to his bosses, but nobody wanted to hear. Until now. With the bodies discovered, the case is dusted off, just to tie a bow around it - but there's something wrong with the evidence."

Stolen Prey

John Sandford

2012

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Lucas Davenport has seen many terrible murder scenes. This is one of the worst. In the small Minnesota town of Deephaven, an entire family has been killed - husband, wife, two daughters, dogs. There's something about the scene that pokes at Lucas's cop instincts - it looks an awful lot like the kind of scorched-earth retribution he's seen in drug killings sometimes. But this is a seriously upscale town, and the husband was an executive vice president at a big bank. It just doesn't seem to fit. Until it does. And where it leads Lucas will take him into the darkest nightmare of his life."

Silken Prey

John Sandford

2013

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"A Minnesota political fixer has hit the jackpot - or so he thinks. Hired to take down the incumbent U.S. senator with a vicious smear, to open the way for an ambitious, take-no-prisoners heiress who sees the Senate as merely a stepping-stone, he decides his payoff should be larger. The blackmail demand should yield some pretty large numbers, he thinks. Instead, he gets only a small one - 9 millimeters, to be exact. In the heart. Davenport is investigating the smear when the trail leads to the man's disappearance, then - very troublingly - to the Minneapolis police department, then - most troublingly of all - to a woman who could give Machiavelli lessons. She has very definite ideas about the way the world should work, and the money, ruthlessness and sheer will to make it happen."

Field of Prey

John Sandford

2014

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"When a county deputy is called out to an abandoned farmhouse in the cornfields of Minnesota by a couple of terrified teenagers, he finds that a body has been stuffed down a cistern. And then another, and another. By the time Lucas Davenport is called in, the police are up to fifteen bodies, and counting. And when Lucas begins to investigate, he makes some disturbing discoveries of his own. The victims have been killed over a great many years, one every summer, regular as clockwork. How could this have happened without anybody noticing? Because one thing was for sure: The killer has to live close by. He is probably even someone they see every day."

Gathering Prey

John Sandford

2015

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes-they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them. Lucas Davenport's adopted daughter, Letty, is home from college when she gets a phone call from a woman Traveler she'd befriended in San Francisco. The woman thinks somebody's killing her friends, she's afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing. She's hiding out in North Dakota, and she doesn't know what to do. Letty tells Lucas she's going to get her, and, though he suspects Letty's getting played, he volunteers to go with her. When he hears the woman's story, though, he begins to think there's something in it. Little does he know. In the days to come, he will embark upon an odyssey through a subculture unlike any he has ever seen, a trip that will not only put the two of them in danger-but just may change the course of his life."

Extreme Prey

John Sandford

2016

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"After the events in Gathering Prey, Lucas Davenport finds himself in a very unusual situation—no longer employed by the Minnesota BCA. His friend the governor is just cranking up a presidential campaign, though, and he invites Lucas to come along as part of his campaign staff. “Should be fun!” he says, and it kind of is—until they find they have a shadow: an armed man intent on killing the governor . . . and anyone who gets in the way."

Golden Prey

John Sandford

2017

A Lucas Davenport novel.

"Lucas Davenport has a job with the U.S. Marshals Service - an unusual one. He gets to pick his own cases, whatever they are, and follow wherever they lead him. And where they’ve led him this time is into real trouble. A house at the center of a drug-smuggling ring is attacked and briefcases full of cash are stolen. But whoever took the money left something behind: five bodies, including that of a six-year-old girl. Davenport vows to track down the cash and find the killers. But he's not the only one on the hunt... the drug smugglers want their money back, and they've sent two assassins, including an infamous torturer known for her creative use of home-improvement tools, after Davenport. It'll take every ounce of Davenport's predatory instinct to track down the killers and money before he becomes the prey."

Three Complete Novels: Rules of Prey / Shadow Prey / Eyes of Prey

John Sandford

1995

An omnibus edition that collects together the first three Prey series novels: Rules of Prey; Shadow Prey; and Eyes of Prey.

Three Complete Novels: Silent Prey / Winter Prey / Night Prey

John Sandford

1996

An omnibus edition that collects together the fourth, fifth and sixth Prey series novels: Silent Prey; Winter Prey; and Night Prey.

Three Complete Novels: Mind Prey / Sudden Prey / Secret Prey

John Sandford

2000

An omnibus edition that collects together the Seventh, eighth and ninth Prey series novels: Mind Prey; Sudden Prey; and Secret Prey.