Lucas Davenport

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 is 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 serves in that capacity through Gathering Prey at the end of which he quits working for the BCA. 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.

The novel Mind Prey was sold for a TV movie, and the Davenport was portrayed by Eriq LaSalle. Another of the novels, Certain Prey, was adapted into a movie in 2011 by USA Network starring Mark Harmon as Davenport.

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 wolverine. 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 "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 over the course of his career, and is permanently tan no more.

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