To follow on from Sunday's Author Corner on the great Stephen King, we have a special segment on John Sandford; a fellow author and somebody that King himself is a big fan of.
These days, this is particularly common in the case of crime fiction. Unfortunately, not only is crime the most apparently well-versed author base in terms of technical experience, it is – or at least was, until very recently – the most saturated of genres. A massive gulf in quality exists between the best and the worst of these authors and things like success and best-seller list track records, whilst displaying a knack for giving an audience what they want, are no guaranteed indicator of knowing a good sentence from a hopeless, cliché and comma-ridden diatribe that will send the latest novel flying out of any astute bookworm’s window.
The fact is that, whilst thrillers are not “literature with a capital L” (as Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond franchise and owner of a solid gold typewriter put it), writing thrillers is an art form. It is a modern sin that the real master-class authors struggle to stand out any more than their dreary contemporaries.
One such great is John Sandford, creator of the massively successful Prey and Virgil Flowers series. Sandford, whose driver’s license actually reads John Camp, was born and raised in Iowa, where a schoolteacher told him he had a talent for composition. Some years later, wielding degrees in history and journalism, he became a crime beat reporter with the Miami Herald before finally settling in Minnesota, home of his much-loved characters and many a grisly misadventure. In the lull between this landmark move to the Twin Cities and the publication of his first novel, he found the time to write a series of feature pieces on the Minnesota farming crisis and win himself a Pulitzer Prize in the process.
So, what makes these books so readable? First of all, the characters. A good series author knows that no amount of intricate plotting, red herrings and fifteen-in-a-row twist endings will get you anywhere without a decent protagonist. The two possible choices are enviably comfortable and lethally capable – which applies to Davenport – or a miserable, good-hearted workhorse the audience can relate to and cheer on from a distance (a la John Rebus). Not content to stop there, he has crafted a backup cast that has gained fame among readers in its own right – sidekick Sloan, a homicide detective who once enjoys a moon pie, a can of Coke and a cigarette for breakfast; Del Capslock (whose name is allegedly a result of midnight writer’s block rage), a haggard undercover narc who looks as though he sleeps in a skip; Clara Rinker, a former stripper getting by as a professional hit woman who narrowly escapes several run-ins with the mob.
Then, of course, there is the journalistic slant. Another trick a good author needs to know – though some of the lit fiction types and academics might disagree – is how to trim a narrative down to the bone, letting the interaction of each chunk the cast lead the way through the key plot turns and eventually collide in a chaotic conclusion. Poetic ramblings, written water-colours, and especially exposition should be kept to a minimum and strategically placed. All of this seems to come as naturally to Sandford as making a quick snack.
The result is a series of fast, violent, funny and stylish crime thrillers that, no matter how many times Davenport shows up in his Porsche and blows someone’s head off, somehow manage to feel as plausible as they are gripping.
Field of Prey, the latest entry in the series, was released in the UK on 8th May. Feel free to nab yourself a copy.