Lucas Davenport
Encyclopedia
Lucas Davenport is the protagonist of the "Prey" series of detective novels written by John Sandford
. 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 (a political appointment), running his own intelligence unit. Beginning with Naked Prey, Davenport has been 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'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.
In one recent novel, not named so as to avoid spoiling, his three closest cop friends gang up to tell him they will not allow Davenport to kill a current suspect.
. 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 (caused by a fishing hook accident) that gives him "a raffish air" and also "a touch of innocence, like Errol Flynn
in Captain Blood" (Rules of Prey). In the very first Davenport book, the hero is described as "He was 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, and is permanently tan no more.
The novel "Mind Prey" was sold for a TV movie, and the Davenport role was grabbed by one of the producers, Eriq LaSalle, who happens to be a black man. He had no hair at all in the role. The movie character's girlfriend, unlike Davenport's fair-haired surgeon of Finnish extraction in the novels, was a black actress who seemed to play either a prostitute or minor show business talent. They cohabited in a lush inner-city pad most unlike the lakeside house described in several Prey novels.
Davenport is street-wise, 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 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 that first created personal computer games for private users, and later, emergency simulations for training police and other emergency workers. He dresses fashionably, favors European-cut clothing, and drives his personal Porsche 911 and Nissan truck or van while on duty. The Nissan seems to have been replaced recently by a Lexus SUV. 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 progressed, Davenport settled down with and eventually married the highly-paid maxillofacial surgeon Weather Karkinnen, who once saved his life with an emergency tracheotomy after he had been shot. The couple have a son, Sam, and in "Buried Prey", Mrs Davenport was advanced in pregnancy with a daughter. Living with the Davenports is and providing a home to Letty West, a once-feral teenage girl encountered in Naked Prey." Lucas and Weather formally adopted Letty in 2008 close to the time of the Republican nomination convention in that year -- an event that prompted a detailed Davenport investigation, and she then changed her name to Letty Davenport. Also in "Buried Prey", Davenport muses on his home life: Letty and Weather were close, but with radically different worldviews. Weather was imbued with the medical profession's caring mentality. Letty's "attitude as Hit first, and if necessary, hit again. Lucas had never loved another woman as he loved Weather.But his attitude was closer to Letty's."
Before that, however, Davenport had numerous sexual encounters with suspects, victims and fellow officers, including Det. Marcy Sherrill, a subordinate, and Lily Rothenburg, a detective lieutenant of the New York Police Department. By "Buried Prey", Sherrill had succeeded Davenport as chief of detectives in Minneapolis, and Davenport was close to his 50th birthday. At the end of Wicked Prey (2009), 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" (Rules of Prey) and at the start of the series owns thirteen - a 9mm H&K P7, 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 (a Ruger Mark II
, a Browning International Medalist and a left-hand bolt-operated Anschutz Exemplar) and four recovered (hence untraceable) street guns including a Charter Arms
.38. In the flashback section of Buried Prey Davenport carried a Glock pistol (presumably the P17) as his sidearm when in uniform and a Smith and 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 a serial killer.
Lucas' other weapons include a Browning Citori
over-and-under 20 gauge
shotgun
, a .243 deer rifle of unstated make and model (Chosen Prey) and a Colt Magnum Carry .357 revolver (Naked Prey). In the earlier books, his standard sidearm is the P7, but he later adopts a .45 Smith and Wesson of unstated model; he retains the P7 as a "dress gun" for off duty carry. As of Buried Prey his usual sidearm is a .45 Colt Gold Cup, carried with the chamber empty. In Invisible Prey, he has a cache containing: two "cold" pistols with magazines, a homemade silencer that fits none of his guns (he kept meaning to throw it away, but never did), 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 was acquired, and uses, a detachable magazine Beretta shotgun of unstated model, probably an M3P.
Letty herself has two (known) weapons, both .22 rifles. One is a single-shot Harrington & Richardson in .22 Short and the other, bought for her by Lucas, a Remington pump-action firing .22 Long Rifle.
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. He received psychological help from a nun professionally trained as a counselor, whom he knew as a local girlfriend when they were both children. The nun sometimes offered him profiles of unknown criminals in the early books.
Davenport refers to himself as a Democrat. He has three children: Sarah (with reporter Jennifer Carey), Sam (with surgeon Weather Karkinnen), and Letty (adopted after her mother was killed) with a fourth, a daughter, expected.
World-leading authority on Davenport, author John Sandford, in June 2002 told The New York Post that he first thought of Davenport as a sociopath: "He had a problem with women. Even when he was in a relationship, he'd [have an affair with] some [other] 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.
John Sandford (novelist)
John Sandford is the pseudonym of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist John Roswell Camp. Camp was born on February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He received a Bachelor's in American History and a Master's in Journalism from the University of Iowa.From 1971 to 1978,...
. In the first three novels, he is a maverick detective with the Minneapolis Police Department
Minneapolis Police Department
The Minneapolis Police Department is the police department for the city of Minneapolis in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Formed in 1867, it is the second oldest police department in the state of Minnesota, after the Saint Paul Police Department . A short-lived Board of Police Commissioners existed...
, 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 (a political appointment), running his own intelligence unit. Beginning with Naked Prey, Davenport has been 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'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.
In one recent novel, not named so as to avoid spoiling, his three closest cop friends gang up to tell him they will not allow Davenport to kill a current suspect.
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 wolverineWolverine
The wolverine, pronounced , Gulo gulo , also referred to as glutton, carcajou, skunk bear, or quickhatch, is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae . It is a stocky and muscular carnivore, more closely resembling a small bear than other mustelids...
. 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 (caused by a fishing hook accident) that gives him "a raffish air" and also "a touch of innocence, like Errol Flynn
Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Flynn was an Australian-born actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films, being a legend and his flamboyant lifestyle.-Early life:...
in Captain Blood" (Rules of Prey). In the very first Davenport book, the hero is described as "He was 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, and is permanently tan no more.
The novel "Mind Prey" was sold for a TV movie, and the Davenport role was grabbed by one of the producers, Eriq LaSalle, who happens to be a black man. He had no hair at all in the role. The movie character's girlfriend, unlike Davenport's fair-haired surgeon of Finnish extraction in the novels, was a black actress who seemed to play either a prostitute or minor show business talent. They cohabited in a lush inner-city pad most unlike the lakeside house described in several Prey novels.
Davenport is street-wise, 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 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 that first created personal computer games for private users, and later, emergency simulations for training police and other emergency workers. He dresses fashionably, favors European-cut clothing, and drives his personal Porsche 911 and Nissan truck or van while on duty. The Nissan seems to have been replaced recently by a Lexus SUV. 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 progressed, Davenport settled down with and eventually married the highly-paid maxillofacial surgeon Weather Karkinnen, who once saved his life with an emergency tracheotomy after he had been shot. The couple have a son, Sam, and in "Buried Prey", Mrs Davenport was advanced in pregnancy with a daughter. Living with the Davenports is and providing a home to Letty West, a once-feral teenage girl encountered in Naked Prey." Lucas and Weather formally adopted Letty in 2008 close to the time of the Republican nomination convention in that year -- an event that prompted a detailed Davenport investigation, and she then changed her name to Letty Davenport. Also in "Buried Prey", Davenport muses on his home life: Letty and Weather were close, but with radically different worldviews. Weather was imbued with the medical profession's caring mentality. Letty's "attitude as Hit first, and if necessary, hit again. Lucas had never loved another woman as he loved Weather.But his attitude was closer to Letty's."
Before that, however, Davenport had numerous sexual encounters with suspects, victims and fellow officers, including Det. Marcy Sherrill, a subordinate, and Lily Rothenburg, a detective lieutenant of the New York Police Department. By "Buried Prey", Sherrill had succeeded Davenport as chief of detectives in Minneapolis, and Davenport was close to his 50th birthday. At the end of Wicked Prey (2009), 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" (Rules of Prey) and at the start of the series owns thirteen - a 9mm H&K P7, a 9mm Beretta 92F
Beretta 92
The Beretta 92 is a series of semi-automatic pistols designed and manufactured by Beretta of Italy. The model 92 was designed in 1972 and production of many variants in different calibers continues today...
, a small .25 automatic of unstated make that he wears in an ankle holster as a hideout gun, two Colt Gold Cup .45 ACP
.45 ACP
The .45 ACP , also known as the .45 Auto by C.I.P., is a cartridge designed by John Browning in 1904, for use in his prototype Colt semi-automatic .45 pistol and eventually the M1911 pistol adopted by the United States Army in 1911.-Design and history:The U.S...
competition pistols, three .22 pistols (a Ruger Mark II
Ruger MK II
The Ruger MK II is a rimfire single-action semi-automatic pistol chambered in .22 Long Rifle and manufactured by Sturm, Ruger & Company. Ruger rimfire pistols are some of the most popular handguns made, with over three million sold.-Models:...
, a Browning International Medalist and a left-hand bolt-operated Anschutz Exemplar) and four recovered (hence untraceable) street guns including a Charter Arms
Charter Arms
Charter Arms Co. is an American manufacturer of revolvers that are relatively inexpensive yet serviceable handguns. The original Charter Arms produced revolvers chambered in calibers .22 Long Rifle, .22 Winchester Magnum, .32 Long, .32 H&R Magnum, .327 Federal Magnum, .357 Magnum, .38 Special and...
.38. In the flashback section of Buried Prey Davenport carried a Glock pistol (presumably the P17) as his sidearm when in uniform and a Smith and 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 a serial killer.
Lucas' other weapons include a Browning Citori
Browning Citori
The Browning Citori is a double-barreled shotgun of the "over and under" type, with one barrel "stacked" above the other; sometimes referred to as a "stacked-barrel" model....
over-and-under 20 gauge
Gauge (bore diameter)
The gauge of a firearm is a unit of measurement used to express the diameter of the barrel. Gauge is determined from the weight of a solid sphere of lead that will fit the bore of the firearm, and is expressed as the multiplicative inverse of the sphere's weight as a fraction of a pound . Thus...
shotgun
Shotgun
A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...
, a .243 deer rifle of unstated make and model (Chosen Prey) and a Colt Magnum Carry .357 revolver (Naked Prey). In the earlier books, his standard sidearm is the P7, but he later adopts a .45 Smith and Wesson of unstated model; he retains the P7 as a "dress gun" for off duty carry. As of Buried Prey his usual sidearm is a .45 Colt Gold Cup, carried with the chamber empty. In Invisible Prey, he has a cache containing: two "cold" pistols with magazines, a homemade silencer that fits none of his guns (he kept meaning to throw it away, but never did), 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 was acquired, and uses, a detachable magazine Beretta shotgun of unstated model, probably an M3P.
Letty herself has two (known) weapons, both .22 rifles. One is a single-shot Harrington & Richardson in .22 Short and the other, bought for her by Lucas, a Remington pump-action firing .22 Long Rifle.
Personal
Born and raised Catholic, Davenport has a strong interest in reading, poetryPoetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
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. He received psychological help from a nun professionally trained as a counselor, whom he knew as a local girlfriend when they were both children. The nun sometimes offered him profiles of unknown criminals in the early books.
Davenport refers to himself as a Democrat. He has three children: Sarah (with reporter Jennifer Carey), Sam (with surgeon Weather Karkinnen), and Letty (adopted after her mother was killed) with a fourth, a daughter, expected.
World-leading authority on Davenport, author John Sandford, in June 2002 told The New York Post that he first thought of Davenport as a sociopath: "He had a problem with women. Even when he was in a relationship, he'd [have an affair with] some [other] 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.