Posted on 11/05/2011 6:59:21 PM PDT by EveningStar
I never pictured Mark Harmon as Lucas Davenport but I guess I'm going to find out how it works out.
Harmon stars as the antihero super-cop in John Sandford’s Certain Prey premiering tomorrow night, November 6, on the USA network
You can read the review by Mike Hale of The New York Times here: Even With a Fancier Car, Mark Harmon Can Still Solve Crimes
Thank you, I think I am having brain drain.................
Read most of them. Harmon doesn’t look like the way I visualize Davenport. Too thin, too handsome, too California. Daviport is a midwesterner.
I’m just curious why you feel the need to curse when semi answering a simple, nicely worded question??????
All of them.....
Night prey or winter prey. Something like that. It’s the one where he is out in the boondocks.
Are they going to put a scar on Harmon's face like Davenport has?
I see Lucas taller though.
..also Lee Child novels......
Vince Flynn and Brad Thor are not scared of guns.
..Personally I don't like the bad language and have never read a Sandford....
...but have found Thor, Flynn, Connelly and Child can usually put together a well crafted novel without resorting to that type of language...(and still get across amazing action scenes and gritty characters)
I’m all caught up with Child .. The Affair is one of his best . Vince Flynn always pleases, but Brad Thor is a consistently premium read.
Ah, how I love owning a bookstore!!
My husband started The Affair by Lee Child and is sitting at the kitchen table reading it right now. He can’t put it down.
One notable thing about Sandford's books is that characters from the first book in a series develop and appear in subsequent books. Some traits about them are consistent and the traits and characteristics that change don't simply change. Changes are either explained or occur because of events in one book, and then carry over into the next book.
Lucas Davenport is a former University of Minnesota hockey player. Distinguishing characteristics include a scar that cuts across one eyebrow from a fishing leader, and a nose that's been broken several times. Mark Harmon isn't stocky or physical enough to play Lucas Davenport of the literary series.
As for Certain Prey's professional assassin, Clara Rinker, she's a stone-cold killer, but a country girl from an abusive past. Rinker appears in at least two "Prey" books. The sophisticated woman I see in the commercials isn't true to the former redneck bar stripper Clara Rinker.
I enjoy Sandford's Prey books a great deal. They're set in Minnesota, and Davenport's first a police detective, then later an agent with the more political Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who gets a little more physical than is permitted by the rules. He has a tendency to shoot people or bust them up. Contrary to the post above, Sandford describes different firearms - not everything's an assault rifle. Rinker uses a .22 for a lot of her killings, and there's a discussion of why she uses it. Davenport made a fortune with a role-playing computer simulation and is a clothes horse who drives a Porsche - and catches crap for it. What helps make the books is the descriptions of life in Minnesota and the cast of characters that continue from book to book.
In addition to the twenty "Prey" novels, there are four older "Kidd" novels, which feature an artist/computer hacker and cat burglar/sometimes girlfriend. They're decent books, but technology became too complicated for Sandford to continue writing them.
"Dead Watch" is a single outlier, a political thriller, that didn't do much for me.
From the cast of characters surrounding Davenport, Sandford pulled Virgil Flowers ('that f**kin' Flowers', as everyone refers to him), a single, surfer-looking, cowboy boot-wearing, independent-band-t-shirt-wearing, agent who handles hard cases in a large area of southwest Minnesota.
Flowers has an interest in women and they, in them. Flowers was raised as a preacher's kid and often quotes apropos Biblical verses; he pulls a fishing boat behind his 4Runner while on cases, because he loves to fish and writes for outdoor journals. He hates firearms and his handgun is usually locked under the seat of his car; but he winds up grabbing a shotgun or something. His manner of solving cases consists of letting everyone in small towns know what evidence he's finding, then following the leads as everyone reacts. I think we're on the fifth F**kin' Flowers book - and they are clear winners.
You're going to read a lot about Minnesota - what the farmhouses are like; how July differs from November; bachelor farmers; how to winterize a fishing boat . . . but the books are good reads and the characters are well-developed.
Is it the first "Reacher" book he's read? That would be interesting - it's the sixteenth in the series and one of the best, but chronologically, it's the first, and tells the story of how and why Reacher became the man who hitchhikes and walks the country, buying clothes as he needs them and carrying only that travel toothbrush.
With a couple of exceptions, the "Reacher" books by Lee Child are good reads. The exception would be the book where Reacher is portrayed as a mathematical savant; a trait he does not display in any earlier or later books.
IMHO, Tom Berenger would have been a better choice.
I appreciate your reply & you are probably correct. I have no problem w/ any language in books, it was just the way this person on this thread responded & then when I asked chose not to respond.
Lucas meets Weather Karkinnon in Winter Prey. It's an early book - #5 in the series. Weather is a doctor in a small town, if I remember correctly, maybe even in Wisconsin. Davenport's seeking a killer, in winter, who is killing people while trying to reclaim a photo of him having sex with a kid (if I recall). Weather performs a field tracheostomy that saves Davenport's life.
There's an attraction, but no relationship at the end of the book. The relationship between the two builds over several (or many) books. And there's down time in the relationship though those books.
Lucas meets Weather Karkinnon in Winter Prey. It's an early book - #5 in the series. Weather is a doctor in a small town, if I remember correctly, maybe even in Wisconsin. Davenport's seeking a killer, in winter, who is killing people while trying to reclaim a photo of him having sex with a kid (if I recall). Weather performs a field tracheostomy that saves Davenport's life.
There's an attraction, but no relationship at the end of the book. The relationship between the two builds over several (or many) books. And there's down time in the relationship though those books.
Lucas was raised as a minister's son. He still believes in God, but he's not necessarily a Christian. Every night before he goes to sleep in the books, he thinks about God. He uses his ability to quote the Bible verbatim in some interesting ways . . . if he's investigating a child molester who claims his religion is church-based, Flowers will drop Bible verses into his conversation and if the man doesn't react or recognize them, Flowers knows the man isn't basing anything on the Bible. Flowers, himself, doesn't swear much (if any) in the books. He'll drink a beer occasionally, but he usually has a Diet Coke. His weaknesses, in order, are fishing and women.
In the books, members of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension refer to him as "that ___'in' Flowers." When he arrives at the scene of a crime, the BCA agent will say "if it isn't that __'in Flowers", or Lucas Davenport's assistant will answer one of Virgil's calls and say to Davenport as she hand him the phone, "it's that __'in' Flowers."
Virgil Flowers does not like it.
So when he arrives in a small town, the police there will say "are you the one they call "that __ Flowers?"
Virgil will sigh and change the subject. Somebody pouring coffee in a diner will say "why do they call you ..." Worse, Virgil will be attracted to some woman in a meaningful way, and she'll express concern about whether his intentions are true by asking him: "why do they call you . . . ."
And at least once, and usually twice of more, during a book, he'll tell somebody "geez, I really wish you wouldn't call me that."
Or he tells Lucas, "Lucas, it bothers me when your secretary says that." He thinks it to himself several times in a book.
So - it a way, it's unnecessary bad language. In a way, you can see a bunch of law enforcement guys using it because they know it annoys Virgil Flowers. And local guys use it because it puts them on the inside - that's what the BCA guys call flowers. Other people find it funny. Flower doesn't.
I don't think Sandford goes out of his way to use colorful words. Lucas Davenport and the other main characters don't swear a great deal. But when he's writing dialogue for people who are raping women and children, or are mass murderers, he uses obscenities . . . but likely not as many obscenities as the characters would in real life.
Agree..but with one happy exception. Tom Selleck’s ongoing portrayaly of Jesse Stone, from the Robert Parker series, has been superb.
Except that Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone was a MLB-quality shortstop or third-baseman (I forget which) before landing on his shoulder and damaging it. Selleck's no infielder. I could see him more as Robert Parker's Spenser.
I love Robert Parker and John Sandford - and you couldn't find two more different novelists. One is a light-hearted light read. Sandford is serious and much more literary. Where they cross is that both are good at building a character and a surrounding cast, and developing them though a series of books. Characters from the Spenser, Jesse Stone, and Sunny Randall series cross believably from one series to the others.
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