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Library lover John Sandford to speak in Cedar Rapids

By John Kenyon

Now, more than ever, the Cedar Rapids Public Library could use an advocate like author John Sandford.

I spoke with Sandford, the Cedar Rapids native born John Camp who is the author of the bestselling “Prey” mystery novels, a few weeks ago for a story to preview his scheduled reading as part of the Out Loud! Author Series from the Metro Library Network. The interview was done the week before his reading was to have taken place and a day before floodwaters overtook his hometown.

His comments about the library were oddly prescient. After talking for quite a while about his novels and his return of sorts to journalism, I threw out a closing question about libraries. Because the event was put on by libraries, did he have any thoughts about their value?

He opened up then, effusive with praise.

“I’m a writer because of the Cedar Rapids Public Library,” he says. “I lived in the library when I was a kid. My folks had books in the house and got me started reading when I was very young. I’ve still got the book, a Grimm’s Fairy Tales illustrated. The first attempts at me making letters are in the front of the book.”

His parents, preoccupied with a house they had just bought, essentially left the young Sandford to his own devices the summer after his eighth grade year. He says he read 126 novels that summer, all recorded on a card that he kept.

“One of the things writers do, they get the form of certain things in their heads,” he says. “That summer made me a writer. It was all young adult stuff, adventure stories… basically the kind of stuff I’m reading now.”

It was clear he believes in libraries, so much so that he equated them with other essential infrastructure in a city.

“I really believe libraries are like water and sewer systems,” he says. “You’ve just gotta have them.”

Little could he have known that the library – and Theatre Cedar Rapids where his reading was to have been held – would be virtually destroyed in the flood that would hit the next day, and that they, like the water and sewer systems, would be on a long list of things the city would need to think long and hard about before restoring. A city can’t get by without water or sewer service, of course, but it’s likely there will be debate about the library.

Sandford, clearly in the library’s corner, rescheduled his reading for July 22 on high ground, in the Washington High School auditorium. Sandford is an alum, having graduated from Washington in 1962. About 300 people attended the reading and donated $2,800 to the Cedar Rapids Public Library recovery effort.

The author launched the new series last year and he’ll balance that with – deep sigh of relief from longtime fans here – the continuation of the Lucas Davenport series.

That series, which propelled Sandford to the top of the bestseller lists, follows former Minneapolis police officer and current Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent Davenport. Its future was in doubt a few years ago. Sandford had said that he was having some trouble coming up with ideas and perhaps saw the end in sight.

Now, with a handful of new Davenport books since, he says he no longer makes such predictions because he doesn’t know what the future holds.

“Coming up with ideas is very complicated,” he says. “Once I get an idea that feels like it’s going to work, it just feels like a natural thing to sit down and do the book and start pushing through it. It doesn’t seem like it takes the same big bursts of energy I used to have.”

After 18 books in the series, Sandford says he does fear that things might become rote, but adds that he hopes someone will tell him if that’s the case.

“At some point I may look back at it and say, ‘I’m screwing it up’ and just stop,” he says.

No worry of that happening any time soon. He says fans seem to like the latest book in the series, Phantom Prey, which finds Davenport battling potentially supernatural forces as he investigates a series of murders. The book included much more current events than has been typical in Sandford’s work. He says those details, which deal with the pending Republican National Convention in St. Paul this summer, was intentional.

“I started to do a little journalism again this year. I went to Iraq with a local online news organization,” he says. “I really liked the reporting. I have covered three or four national political conventions, years ago. I have talked to the people who sent me to Iraq and they’re going to get me credentials for the convention. I think St. Paul might have a disaster on their hands, they might not be prepared. It occurred to me that would make a terrific background for a Davenport story.”

The next book picks up where this one leaves off, time wise, focusing on the three weeks leading up to the convention and then the convention itself. Sandford says he will go back and rewrite depending on actual events.

Asked what will happen to what will surely be a riveting narrative should things in St. Paul remain quiet, he says the people in his book would be surprised by that.

“The crime is the result of some sort of mental pathology. This one will be a crime planned for profit and planned in a very coldly rational way,” he says. “It’s built on the fact that the convention is happening.”

He crafted a “charming, hardcore, interesting villain” for this one, a criminal businessman who commits his crimes in a coldly logical way, he says. He talks about this new character with relish, and adds that he is more interested these days in devising characters.

That desire was one he cited a few years back when he talked about possibly leaving Davenport behind to create a new series. Now, he has decided to balance the two, keeping Davenport alive while pursuing a new series that follows Davenport’s underling in the BCI, Virgil Flowers.

The first Flowers book, Dark of the Moon, was published in October. It, like the others to follow, is a collaboration, this one with Larry Millett, a writer who has penned thrillers as well as books about Minnesota architecture and history.

The second, Heat Lightning, due in September, was written with Chuck Logan, a fellow Minnesota thriller writer with a handful of books to his name. A third will be written with Bill Gardner, a former St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter who Sandford describes as a fishing buddy.

In all three cases, the collaborator works out the plot and story and does reporting and location scouting, then turns things over to Sandford, who actually writes the book.

“It’s more social,” he says. “I get together with these guys and talk with them. I’m writing the Davenport book while Gardener is out reporting the Flowers book. He’ll have a big notebook for me in January and I’ll spend three months crashing through a Flowers book.”

Sandford had talked a few years back about recalibrating his schedule to have more pleasant breaks – i.e., not during the depth of Minnesota’s winters – but has seemingly doubled his workload instead. He said that came in part because his wife died of breast cancer in June 2007 after battling it for about five years.

“I no longer have the responsibility of taking care of a household, is what it amounts to,” he says. “I’m in my little cabin surrounded by electronic equipment that I work on. If I ever get to the point where I’m out chasing women, that may change.

“I’m lucky in the fact that I’ve always liked my work,” he adds.

He’ll also continue to sprinkle a bit of journalism into his schedule. After graduating from the University of Iowa, Sandford got his start in writing as a newspaper reporter, first for the Miami Herald and later the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. He won a Pulitzer Prize, the industry’s top award, in 1986. He left the paper in 1989.

“The thing is, when you’re working for a newspaper, you’re assigned to do stuff,” he says. “When I worked for my newspaper I had enough clout to avoid things.”

Then again, he says, the week after he won the Pulitzer, he was doing the routine – and somewhat mind numbing – work of checking with area police departments to see what was going on because there wasn’t anyone else around to do it.

Now he can pick what he wants to do. That meant being able to convince MinnPost.com, an online news magazine covering Minnesota, to send him to Iraq in January.

“I enjoyed it immensely,” he says of the work, which he wrote under his real name, John Camp. “Because it wasn’t a job, it wasn’t just in and out. I wasn’t just doing something I didn’t want to do because I had to do it. It was exciting when I arrived and exciting up until the last minute I was there.”

Kind of like one of his novels.

John Sandford appears at the Out Loud! Author series, 7 p.m. July 22 at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. Monetary donations will be accepted for the flood ravaged Cedar Rapids Public Library. The Out Loud! author series is a joint project of the Cedar Rapids, Marion and Hiawatha Public Libraries and is funded by the Giacoletto Foundation.