Lucas Davenport (Prey) Books in Order
The Prey novels follow Lucas Davenport, a Minneapolis detective who later works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and then the U.S. Marshals Service. He is wealthy from a side career designing games, dresses well, drives fast and is willing to bend the rules when he thinks the result is worth it. Most of the books are set in Minnesota, though the later ones range across the country.
Sandford writes procedurals with a thriller's pace, often letting readers see the killer's side of the story as well as the cop's. The tone is tough and frequently funny, with plenty of banter among cops and a steady thread about Lucas's family life. Later books bring in Virgil Flowers and Lucas's daughter Letty from Sandford's other series.
It suits readers who like long-running crime series with a strong lead, sharp dialogue and violent but well-plotted cases. The books stand alone reasonably well, but Lucas changes a lot over the years, so publication order works best.
Rules of Prey
A young Minneapolis lawyer is killing women according to a private set of rules meant to keep him uncatchable, and he leaves notes at the scenes to prove how clever he is. Lucas Davenport, a lieutenant who designs games on the side and prefers to work alone, takes it personally. The first book sets the series template: a smart, patient killer, a cop who bends procedure when it suits him, and chapters that switch between hunter and hunted.
Published: 1989
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Shadow Prey
Ritual throat-slashings hit Minneapolis, New York and Oklahoma City, and every trail leads back to a group of radicals from Minnesota's Native American community. Lucas teams up with Lily Rothenburg, a New York detective sent to help, and the two start an affair neither of them should. It is a bigger, more political story than the first book, with a killer who is frightening because the people who set him loose can't control him.
Published: 1990
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Eyes of Prey
A doctor's wife is murdered and her eyes mutilated, and the only lead is a witness who saw a man with a badly scarred face near the scene. Lucas, worn down and sliding into depression after his last cases, has to pull himself together when the killings continue. The opponent is a brilliant man obsessed with death, and the book spends real time inside Lucas's head as he fights his own darkness while chasing him.
Published: 1991
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Silent Prey
The killer from Eyes of Prey is loose in New York and back to his grisly experiments. The NYPD asks Lucas for help because nobody knows the man better, and when he arrives he finds Lily Rothenburg working a separate case about a group of cops who may be quietly executing criminals. The two investigations start to run together and test where Lucas's loyalties lie. Read Eyes of Prey first, since this follows straight on.
Published: 1992
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Winter Prey
Lucas is staying at his cabin in the snowbound woods of northern Wisconsin when a family is murdered and their house burned to the ground. The local sheriff, out of his depth, asks for help. Working far from his usual sources, Lucas uncovers crimes much uglier than the arson, and meets Weather Karkinnen, the town doctor. It is often named as a high point of the series, mostly for its setting and the cold that gets into every scene.
Published: 1993
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Night Prey
A state investigator is convinced that several murdered women are the work of one man who has never been caught, but nobody takes her seriously. Lucas, still recovering from injuries and asked to help by the new Minneapolis police chief, comes around to her view. The killer is a burglar who fixes on women he sees and builds fantasies around them, and the hunt runs alongside Lucas's attempt at a steadier personal life.
Published: 1994
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Mind Prey
A psychiatrist and her two daughters are snatched from a parking lot, and the man who took them is someone from her past. Lucas, now a deputy chief, races to find them while the mother works on her captor from inside an isolated farmhouse, using everything she knows about how his mind works. It is one of the tightest books in the series, built around a ticking clock and two people fighting the same man from opposite sides.
Published: 1995
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Sudden Prey
Lucas's team kills a bank robber in a shootout, and her husband decides to repay the department in kind by going after the families of the officers involved. One cop's spouse is shot, another is ambushed at work, and Lucas realizes his own people, and maybe his own household, are on the list. This is a straight revenge thriller with a relentless pace and a villain who wants every loss to hurt.
Published: 1996
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Secret Prey
A bank chairman is shot dead during a deer hunt with four of his executives, and each of them had a reason to want him gone. What looks like a classic country-house whodunit grows into something larger, with a big corporate deal and a lot of money at stake. Meanwhile Lucas is restless in his personal life and wondering whether he still wants the job. A more puzzle-driven Prey book than most.
Published: 1998
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Certain Prey
Clara Rinker is a polite, professional hit woman from the South who does the job and goes home. A Minneapolis defense attorney hires her to remove a romantic rival, a witness survives, and the loose ends start multiplying. Lucas finds himself up against one of the most capable opponents of his career. Rinker became one of the series' most memorable characters, and much of the story is told from her side.
Published: 1999
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Easy Prey
A famous fashion model is strangled after a party in Minneapolis, a second body turns up in a closet, and one of Lucas's own detectives was at the party. Drugs, money and a crowded field of suspects make this a messy case that keeps shifting under him. On the personal side, a woman from his past comes back into his life. A good pick for readers who like a sprawling investigation with plenty of suspects.
Published: 2000
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Chosen Prey
James Qatar, an art history professor with a secret habit of photographing women and turning the pictures into explicit drawings, kills one of his subjects and finds that he liked it. Lucas takes the case himself, hoping plain police work will clear his head, but Qatar learns from every mistake. The book is partly a portrait of a killer finding his footing and partly about Lucas sorting out his own unsettled personal life.
Published: 2001
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Mortal Prey
Clara Rinker, the hit woman from Certain Prey, is living quietly in Mexico when a sniper kills the man beside her. She knows she was the real target and heads north to find out who sent him, and the FBI and DEA borrow Lucas to help track her down. Lucas, meanwhile, is supposed to be getting ready for his wedding. Read Certain Prey first, since this is a direct follow-up with the same cat-and-mouse feel.
Published: 2002
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Naked Prey
Lucas now works for the state as a troubleshooter on politically touchy cases, and he is married with a baby son. His first assignment sends him to northern Minnesota, where a man and a woman have been found hanged from a tree. With help from Letty, a tough and very streetwise local girl, he works through a small town full of secrets. This book marks a real shift for the series, in both Lucas's job and his household.
Published: 2003
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Hidden Prey
A Russian man is found shot dead on the Lake Superior waterfront in Duluth, and he turns out to have connections that interest the FBI, Moscow and Minnesota alike. The Russians send one of their own detectives to work alongside Lucas, and the two dig into Cold War secrets that some people would prefer stay buried. A change of pace for the series, closer to an espionage story than a standard serial-killer hunt.
Published: 2004
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Broken Prey
A young woman is found murdered and displayed on a Minneapolis riverbank, and a week later a man is found killed the same way at a farmhouse outside town. Nothing obvious links the victims, and Lucas starts looking hard at patients recently released from the state hospital for the criminally insane. One of the darker and more unsettling entries, with a lot of attention paid to how damaged minds work.
Published: 2005
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Invisible Prey
Two elderly women are beaten to death in their mansion in one of Minneapolis's wealthiest neighborhoods, and it looks like an addict's burglary gone wrong. Lucas notices that the items taken don't fit that story and follows the trail into the world of antiques and art. At the same time he is handling a sensitive political case on the side. A clever, slower-burning mystery that rewards attention to small details.
Published: 2007
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Phantom Prey
A widow comes home to blood on the walls and no sign of her grown daughter, who had been running with Minneapolis's goth crowd. The police find nothing, and then other young people from the same scene start dying. Lucas takes the case as a favor and wades into a subculture he barely understands. The widow insists she keeps seeing her daughter, which gives a ghostly edge to an otherwise grounded investigation.
Published: 2008
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Wicked Prey
The Republican National Convention comes to St. Paul, and so does a professional robbery crew that sees big money in the delegates and their hotels. Lucas has his hands full with security, but a more personal threat is closing in: a pimp who blames Lucas for the bullet that put him in a wheelchair wants revenge, and he has his eye on Letty. Two plots, both urgent, run side by side until they collide.
Published: 2009
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Storm Prey
Three men rob a hospital pharmacy before dawn, a worker dies, and on the way out they come face to face with a surgeon parking in the garage. The surgeon is Weather Karkinnen, Lucas's wife, and the robbers decide she may be able to identify them. Lucas has to find them before they find her, while Weather is busy with a high-profile operation of her own. It moves fast and keeps the danger close to home.
Published: 2010
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Buried Prey
Demolition crews in Minneapolis uncover the bodies of two girls who vanished in 1985, and Lucas knows the case well because he worked it as a young patrol officer. The first half of the book goes back to that original investigation and a younger, rougher Lucas just before his move to plainclothes, and the second half picks up the hunt in the present. A good choice for readers curious about how Lucas became the cop he is.
Published: 2011
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Stolen Prey
An entire family is slaughtered in their home in upscale Wayzata, with a crude message written in blood on the wall. The scene looks like the work of a Mexican drug cartel, which makes no sense for a suburban couple with a small software business. Lucas digs in as federal agents, Mexican police and some far less welcome visitors arrive in town. One of the more violent books in the series, with a fast-moving plot.
Published: 2012
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Silken Prey
A political fixer is snatched from his home, and soon afterward child pornography is found on a computer belonging to a sitting U.S. senator in the middle of a reelection fight. Lucas looks into what seems like a smear and follows the trail into the Minneapolis police department and on to a rich, ambitious woman running for the same seat. Half crime novel and half political thriller, it introduces a villain who returns later in the series.
Published: 2013
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Field of Prey
A teenager notices a bad smell at an abandoned farmyard near Red Wing, and a deputy finds a body stuffed down an old cistern, then another, then many more. The victims were killed one each summer over many years, which means the killer has been living among his neighbors the whole time. Lucas leads a big, frustrating hunt across farm country, and the tension comes from knowing the man is almost certainly someone the locals see every day.
Published: 2014
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Gathering Prey
Letty, home from college, gets a call from a young drifter she met in San Francisco who says someone is killing members of her loose community of Travelers. Lucas goes with Letty to North Dakota to find her, half expecting a con, and starts to believe the story. The trail leads to a charismatic man and the followers who gather around him. The book also brings a major change in Lucas's working life.
Published: 2015
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Extreme Prey
Lucas has left the Minnesota BCA, and his friend the governor invites him along on a presidential campaign in Iowa. It sounds like an easy gig until a tip suggests someone plans to kill a candidate, and it is not clear who the target is or who the shooter might be. Lucas works the rural campaign circuit with no badge and little backup. The story follows a group of angry, disaffected locals almost as closely as it follows Lucas.
Published: 2016
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Golden Prey
Lucas is now a U.S. Marshal with unusual freedom to pick his own cases. His first takes him to Biloxi, Mississippi, where a drug cartel's counting house has been robbed of suitcases full of cash and five people are left dead, including a six-year-old girl. The robbers run, with Lucas, cartel killers and a sadistic interrogator all on their trail. A road-chase story that lays out the new rules for Lucas's career.
Published: 2017
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Twisted Prey
The rich, ruthless woman Lucas tangled with in Silken Prey is now a U.S. senator, and he has never stopped believing she got away with murder. When rumors suggest she is using her seat on the intelligence committee for something worse than politics, Lucas, now a federal marshal, starts digging. He knows she will hurt anyone in her way. Read Silken Prey first for the full backstory, since this is a direct rematch.
Published: 2018
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Neon Prey
U.S. Marshals go looking for Clayton Deese, a loan shark's enforcer who skipped bail in Louisiana, and find a field of graves behind his cabin. Deese turns out to be a serial killer who has gone unnoticed for years, and the chase pulls Lucas from the bayou out to Las Vegas. Deese is unpredictable and smarter than he looks, which keeps the hunt tense right to the end. One of the more straightforward manhunts in the series.
Published: 2019
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Masked Prey
Someone has posted photos of the children of Washington politicians on an extremist website, surrounded by angry political rants. No crime has technically been committed, so the FBI's hands are tied, and a senator asks Lucas to look into it quietly. Working in Washington with fellow marshals Bob Matees and Rae Duncan, he tries to figure out whether the site is a real threat or a stunt, and who is behind it.
Published: 2020
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Ocean Prey
Three Coast Guard officers are shot dead off the Florida coast after checking out a suspicious boat. When the FBI's investigation stalls, Lucas is called in, and he recruits Virgil Flowers to go undercover among the people he suspects. This is the first of several books that pair the leads of Sandford's two Minnesota series, and it gives each of them room to work in his own style.
Published: 2021
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Righteous Prey
A group calling itself The Five announces that it will murder people who deserve to die, then sends untraceable money to victims and charities. Social media loves them. After a woman is killed in the Twin Cities, Lucas and Virgil Flowers set out to identify a group that seems to be made up of bored, very wealthy people who are sure they can't be caught. A modern vigilante story with a good dose of dark humor.
Published: 2022
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Judgment Prey
A wealthy federal judge and his two young sons are shot dead while playing basketball at their St. Paul home. The judge had plenty of enemies, and a large charitable donation he was about to make adds money to the list of possible motives. Lucas and Virgil Flowers work the case while the local police and the FBI make little headway. A more traditional whodunit than some recent books, with a wide field of suspects.
Published: 2023
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Toxic Prey
Dr. Lionel Scott, an expert in infectious disease, has come to believe that humanity is killing the planet and that the fix is fewer humans. When he vanishes, Letty Davenport, now a federal investigator, is asked to find him, and she brings in her father. The book splits time between Lucas and Letty and works as a crossover with Sandford's Letty Davenport series. Expect a bigger, more global threat than usual.
Published: 2024
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Lethal Prey
Twenty years after an accounting firm employee was stabbed and dumped near a park east of St. Paul, her twin sister, newly diagnosed with cancer, posts the entire case file online and asks true-crime fans to solve it. The publicity drags the cold case back into the light, and Lucas and Virgil Flowers take it on, which makes someone with a lot to lose very nervous. A cold-case story with a modern internet-sleuthing angle.
Published: 2025
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Revenge Prey
A Russian intelligence officer who defected to the United States is moved with his family into witness protection in a wooded Minneapolis suburb, and Lucas and fellow marshal Shelly White are there to receive them. A Russian hit team has followed them, and it soon becomes clear that someone inside the system is leaking. Lucas has to find the leak before the killers try again. An espionage-flavored entry that brings international trouble to Minnesota.
Published: 2026
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