Frequently Asked Questions
I've received a lot of questions over the years, and many of
them are common enough that I've compiled this list. It has the most common
questions I get. Except for the first one — the order of the books is
far and away the most common question I am asked — they're in no particular
order.
What is the order of the books?
The Prey books do take place in
chronological order, although people seem to read them out of order. Similarly,
the Kidd novels take place in a particular order, and people often
start with the second novel because the paperback erroneously claims
that it's first. The full list, by series, is:
The Prey series:
- Rules of Prey (1989)
- Shadow Prey (1990)
- Eyes of Prey (1991)
- Silent Prey (1992)
- Winter Prey (1993)
- Night Prey (1994)
- Mind Prey (1995)
- Sudden Prey (1996)
- Secret Prey (1998)
- Certain Prey (1999)
- Easy Prey (2000)
- Chosen Prey (2001)
- Mortal Prey (2002)
- Naked Prey (2003)
- Hidden Prey (2004)
- Broken Prey (2005)
- Invisible Prey(2007)
- Phantom Prey (2008)
- Wicked Prey (2009)
- Storm Prey (2010)
- Buried Prey (2011)
- Stolen Prey (2012)
- Silken Prey (2013)
- Field of Prey (2014)
- Gathering Prey (2015)
- Extreme Prey (2016)
- Golden Prey (2017)
- Twisted Prey (2018)
- Neon Prey (2019)
- Masked Prey (2020)
- Ocean Prey (2021)
- Righteous Prey (2022)
- Judgment Prey (2023)
- Toxic Prey (2024)
The Virgil Flower series:
- Dark of the Moon(2007)
- Heat Lightning (2008)
- Rough Country (2009)
- Bad Blood (2010)
- Shock Wave (2011)
- Mad River (2012)
- Storm Front (2013)
- Deadline (2014)
- Escape Clause (2016)
- Deep Freeze (2017)
- Holy Ghost (2018)
- Bloody Genius (2019)
The Letty Davenport series:
- The Investigator(2022)
- Dark Angel(2023)
The Kidd series:
- The Fool's Run (1989)
- The Empress File (1991)
- The Devil's Code (2000)
- The Hanged Man's Song (2003)
The Singular Menace:
Non-Series Books:
- The Night Crew (1997)
- Dead Watch (2006)
- Saturn Run (2015)
I heard that John Sandford died recently. Is this true?
No. The rumor (probably) started when Lawrence Sanders died in
1997. Sanders wrote in a the same subset of thriller fiction as John Sandford,
and the names were close enough that it caused some confusion.
Later, in 2005, Christian minister and author John A. Sanford died, and the
rumors started again.
As of this writing (July, 2020), John Sandford is 76 years old and in good
health.
What were the latest books to be released?
The most recent hardcover was Toxic
Prey, the thirty-fourth novel in the Prey series of thrillers
featuring Lucas Davenport. It was released on October 3rd, 2023.
Before that, the thirty-third Prey novel, Judgment Prey was released on October 3rd, 2023.
What's coming out next?
The next hardcover novel will be an as-uet-untitled
Prey novel. There is no release date for it rigth now.
Will there be any more Prey novels?
Yes. The author is currently working on the the thirty-fifth
book in the series. It doens't have a name yet, and we don't know when it
will be released.
Will there be any more Virgil Flowers novels?
Perhaps. The author has ideas for a future Virgil novel, with
the working titles being either Two Weeks' Notice or the more succinct
Virgil Quits. He is also considering writing one of the books that
Virgil has written in-universe, but that may not happen.
Will there be any more Kidd novels?
It's unlikely at this point. We've had ideas for a potential
fifth book, but the truth is the Kidd series simply doesn't sell well
enough to justify a new Kidd novel versus another Lucas or Virgil
novel. If there ever is another novel in the series, it's going to have
to be completely different from the previous ones.
Will there be any more Night Crew novels?
Probably not.
The author thought for a while that he'd write a second Anna-and-company
book at some point in "the future", but has since decided that Anna is basically
a female Lucas, minus the badge. And having two characters that similar, by the
same author, is just redundant.
Further, Los Angeles really isn't his area. He knows the Twin Cities and
the surrounding countryside, but he just doesn't have the same rapport with the
west coast. And one of his favorite authors, Robert Crais (who is, in turn, one
of my dad's fans) does have that rapport with L.A. So my dad's leaving
the west-coast stuff to him, although there's no formal agreement (and a formal
agreement would be kinda weird anyway).
Are any of the books going to be made into movies?
Two already have been, sort of.
In 1998, Jaffe/Braunstein Films, Ltd. made a TV-movie of Mind Prey, starring Eriq LaSalle (Doctor Benton on
E.R.) as Lucas Davenport. It got mediocre ratings, and fared poorly
with fans.
In November of 2011, the USA TV network aired a TV movie of Certain Prey, starring Mark Harmon (of NCIS
fame) as Lucas Davenport. The ratings were extremely strong, giving the USA
network its highest numbers for the year, and ranking as the number-two
first-run cable movie of the year. Reviews were decidedly mixed with fans and
non-fans alike polarized.
The USA network has not announced plans for any more movies,
and at this point it seems unlikely that they will.
Has he considered doing a crossover with [name of author]?
Not in novels. Writing is (usually) a solitary art. While authors
occasionally collaborate with other authors, that remains the exception rather
than the rule. Sometimes authors may mention Lucas or Lucas-like characters in
their novels, and John Sandford frequently includes references to other authors
and their characters, but there will not be any direct crossovers.
He has, however, collaborated with other authors for some short
stories. In 2014, he and Jeffery Deaver wrote "Rhymes with Prey", crossing over
Lucas Davenport with Lincoln Rhymes. It appeared in the International Thriller
Writers short story compilation FaceOff. Then, in 2017, he and Lisa
Jackson crossed over Virgil Flowers and Regan Pescoli in "Deserves to be Dead"
for the ITW short story compilation, MatchUp.
He has also written the young-adult sci-fi series The Singular Menace with his wife, Michele Cook, and
the stand-alone science fiction novel Saturn Run
with photographer and physicist Ctein. None of those books are
crossovers.
Is he going to kill off Lucas someday?
The standard answer he gives for this is, "No, because my
editor has told me that it would kill sales of the backstock."
This doesn't mean that the Prey series is going to go forever. He
says that he plans to transform the Prey series somehow in two or three
years, but he's been saying that for the past fifteen years. You'll just have to
wait and see.
Why does he use a pseudonym?
Because the publication dates of The
Fool's Run and Rules of Prey were too close
together (Rules of Prey was slated for July of 1989,
and The Fool's Run was going to come out the following
September). Now, it's considered poor form to have two debut novels released in
the space of that short a time, or even to have two debut novels
period. Since The Fool's Run had already been
sold under the name John Camp, a pseudonym had to be used for the other book
(because Putnam didn't want Henry Holt riding on the publicity for Rules of Prey).
Where did "Sandford" come from?
Sandford is his paternal grandmother's maiden name. Sometimes
he'll say that he's named after his great-grandfather Sandford. While that's
true, it still leaves four possibilities. I'm just narrowing it down to one by
phrasing it the way I do.
Has he written any children's books?
No, he hasn't written any children's books, nor has he
illustrated any. There is, however, a writer/illustrator named John
Sandford who writes primarily children's books. He is not in any way related to
this author.
Has he written any Christian philosophy / inspiration books?
No, but there are two writers with similar names who write on
that topic and the names get confused with the Prey series
author.
One is John Loren Sandford, founder of Elijah House. He (along with his
wife) has written more than two dozen books on Christian philosophy and
spirituality. The Elijah House website is at http://www.elijahhouse.org/. He has not
written any crime thrillers.
The other is John A. Sanford, Jungian psychoanalyst and Episcopal priest
(according to this
article on WikiPedia. He died in 2005.
Why is the website a .org instead of a .com?
Because johnsandford.com was already taken when I
tried to get the domain. It had been registered by domain squatters — no
surprise there — but these people were playing the "noble" card. See, they
claimed that their company existed solely to register celebrity names and hold
them until the "rightful" celebrity shows up to take it away, at which point
they'd give it away for free. This would prevent the name being used for porn
sites. As I said, noble.
Alas, it turned out that what they were really doing was using
their ownership of the site to leverage themselves into a different job: that of
running the site for the celebrity in question. When I was adamant
that, no, I was the webmaster and I wanted the name, they offered to turn it
over for free. Plus about $700 in shipping and handling.
I could have done it, sure. I could have paid $700 to domain squatters and
gotten the name. I could also have taken them to court, since a court had
recently ruled that for personal names, if you don't have a reasonable claim to
that name, you can't hold the domain name from someone who does have a
reasonable claim. But the easier path by far was to just get .org. Since I
already had a .org (for something completely different) and since the Sandford
site wasn't meant for profit, I went with that solution.
They eventually sold the domain name (or lost it, perhaps) and now it's a
series of meta-forwards to a generic geo-targeted advertising page. Since
this website's comfortably been a .org for more than two decades, I've
got no particular desire to try to get the .com.
And that's the end
of that. Now you know.