John Sandford Books in Order (Prey, Virgil Flowers)

A writer from Iowa, John Sandford is mostly known for two of his series, the Lucas Davenport/Prey series, and his spin-off, the Virgil Flowers series. Born in 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, John Sandford is a pseudonym of John Roswell Camp, an American author, and journalist who’s passionate about archaeology and History. Camp won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1986 and was one of four finalists for the prize in 1980.

Camp decided to use this pen name after his publisher asked to provide a pseudonym for the Prey series. The Lucas Davenport stories became so popular, Camp published all of his subsequent novels under John Sandford.

How to read John Sandford’s Books in Order?

Reading The Lucas Davenport/Prey series in order

Lucas Davenport works as a detective with the Minneapolis Police Department, then moved around changing assignments while tracking criminals of course. He is wealthy, streetwise, has a wide network of contacts among all levels of society, and has a strong interest in reading, poetry, and war gaming. Although, he sometimes has to think like a criminal to stop them. For more information, check out our article dedicated to the Lucas Davenport/Prey series.

1. Rules of Prey (1989)
2. Shadow Prey (1990)
3. Eyes of Prey (1991)
4. Silent Prey (1992)
5. Winter Prey (1993)
6. Night Prey (1994)
7. Mind Prey (1995)
8. Sudden Prey (1996)
9. Secret Prey (1998)
10. Certain Prey (1999)
11. Easy Prey (2000)
12. Chosen Prey (2001)
13. Mortal Prey (2002)
14. Naked Prey (2003)
15. Hidden Prey (2004)
16. Broken Prey (2005)
17. Invisible Prey (2007)
18. Phantom Prey (2008)
19. Wicked Prey (2009)
20. Storm Prey (2010)
21. Buried Prey (2011)
22. Stolen Prey (2012)
23. Silken Prey (2013)
24. Field of Prey (2014)
25. Gathering Prey (2015)
26. Extreme Prey (2016)
27. Golden Prey (2017)
28. Twisted Prey (2018)
29. Neon Prey (2019)
30. Masked Prey (2020)
31. Ocean Prey (2021)
32. Righteous Prey (2022)
33. Judgment Prey (2023)

Letty Davenport spin-off

1. The Investigator (2022)
2. Dark Angel (2023)

Reading The Kidd Books in Order

This series is connected to the Prey Series, Kidd has a prominent role in Silken Prey and Extreme Prey. Kidd is a computer whiz, artist, and professional criminal. LuEllen is his lover, and his favorite partner in crime. Their playing field in on the cutting edge of high-tech corporate warfare.

1. The Fool’s Run – Kidd and LuEllen have been hired by a defense industry corporation to destroy its business rival through computer sabotage. If they can pull it off, they’ll reap millions. It’s the sting of a lifetime. One false move and it’s a lifetime sentence. As the takedown unfolds, everything goes according to plan. But their string of successes turns into a noose when the ultimate con artists find themselves on the wrong end of the ultimate con…
2. The Empress File – When good citizens of a small Mississippi town enlist his talents to clean up their corrupt local government, Kidd and a lovely cat-burglar cohort set up a scam operation designed to force the politicians’ resignations.
3. The Devil’s Code – When Kidd —learns of a colleague’s murder, he doesn’t buy the official story: that a jittery security guard caught the hacker raiding the files of a high-tech Texas corporation. It’s not what his friend was looking for that got him killed. It’s what he already knew. For Kidd and LuEllen, infiltrating the firm is the first move.
4. The Hanged Man’s Song – When Kidd’s superhacker friend Bobby is murdered and his laptop is stolen, Kidd knows it’s panic time. The secrets stashed in Bobby’s computer are enough to hang Kidd and everyone else in Bobby’s criminally ingenious cyber-circle. It’s up to Kidd and his partner LuEllen to track it down, find Bobby’s killer, and save their own necks.

Reading the Virgil Flowers series in order

Thrice divorced and in his late thirties, Virgil Flowers is a member of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), who reports to Lucas Davenport, the main protagonist of the Prey series. In fact, Virgil Flowers was also a supporting character in some of the Prey novels, including Invisible Prey and Storm Prey. Brought to the BCA by Davenport himself, Flowers was in the army and the military police before relocating to Bluestem where he operates pretty much on his own. For more details, go to our article about reading the Virgil Flowers series.

1. Dark of the Moon (2007)
2. Heat Lightning (2008)
3. Rough Country (2009)
4. Bad Blood (2010)
5. Shock Wave (2011)
6. Mad River (2012)
7. Storm Front (2013)
8. Deadline (2014)
9. Escape Clause (2016)
10. Deep Freeze (2017)
11. Holy Ghost (2018)
12. Bloody Genius (2019)
13. Ocean Prey (2021) – part of the Prey Series.
14. Righteous Prey (2022) – part of the Prey Series.

Reading The Singular Menace books in order (with Michele Cook)

This series follows 16-year-old Shay Remby and her gang of renegades who fight to expose the truth about a ruthless corporation and their unspeakable experiments.

1. Uncaged – Shay Remby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife, searching for her brother, Odin. Odin’s a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal-rights activists hit a Singular Corp. research lab in Eugene, Oregon. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog.
2. Outrage – Shay Remby and her gang of renegades have struck a blow to the Singular Corporation. When they rescued Shay’s brother, Odin, from a secret Singular lab, they also liberated a girl. Singular has been experimenting on her, trying to implant a U.S. senator’s memories into her brain-with partial success. Fenfang is now a girl who literally knows too much.
3. Rampage – Shay Remby and her band of renegade activists have got the corrupt Singular Corporation on the run. Their expose is finally working. Or is it? Even as revelations about the human experimental subjects break in the news, Singular’s employees are slithering out of sight. And then their CEO is killed in a plane crash… Was it a freak accident? Or a cover-up?

Reading Standalone books by John Sandford

And now the books John Sandford wrote that never were part of any series.

• The Night Crew – A mobile unit of video freelancers, the Night Crew prowl the midnight streets to sell to the highest network bidder. Murders. Robberies. High-speed chases. For them, it is an exhilerating life. But tonight, two deaths will change everything…
• Dead Watch – Former Sen. Lincoln Bowe, a Republican, has been missing for several days, setting off alarms on both sides of the political aisle. Finally, he is discovered in the remote Virginia woods, barb-wired to a tree, burned almost beyond recognition and missing his head. Democratic ‘research assistant’ (read: fixer) Jacob Winter, ex-Army Intelligence, wounded in Afghanistan, is called in by the Democratic president to unravel an extremely messy situation and shield his office from any hint of scandal. As this runaway train picks up speed, innocents are murdered, and the guilty come to Jesus…
• Saturn Run – The year is 2066. A Caltech intern inadvertently notices an anomaly from a space telescope-something is approaching Saturn, and decelerating. Space objects don’t decelerate. Spaceships do. A flurry of top-level government meetings produces the inescapable conclusion: Whatever built that ship is at least one hundred years ahead in hard and soft technology, and whoever can get their hands on it exclusively and bring it back will have an advantage so large, no other nation can compete. A conclusion the Chinese definitely agree with when they find out. The race is on.

If you like our article about the John Sandford reading order, don’t forget to bookmark it! You may be interested in David Baldacci, James Patterson, Stuart Woods… Also, John Sandford is an old friend of Carl Hiaasen, a newspaper columnist from Florida and author of the Skink series.