Camp was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the son of Anne Agnes (Barron) and Roswell Sandford Camp.[4][5] His mother's family was German and Lithuanian.[6] He received a bachelor's degree in American history and literature[7] and a master's in journalism, both from the University of Iowa.[8]
From 1971 to 1978, Camp wrote for The Miami Herald. In 1978, he moved to Minneapolis and started writing for The Saint Paul Pioneer Press as a features reporter; in 1980 he became a daily columnist. That year, he was a Pulitzer finalist for a series of stories on Native American culture.[9] In 1985, during the Midwest farm crisis, he wrote a series titled "Life on the Land: an American Farm Family," which followed a typical southwest Minnesota farm family through the course of a full year. For that work, he won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing[9] and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for Non-Deadline Feature Writing. He worked part-time at the Pioneer Press in 1989[10] and left the following year.
Camp is an avid fiction reader himself. When asked in 2018, "What's your favorite book of all time?" by the New York Times, he responded, "An impossible question. If you put a gun to my head—say a .40-caliber Walther PPQ, or maybe a .45 ACP Colt Gold Cup—I'd say The Once and Future KingbyT. H. White."[11] Both weapons he mentioned make appearances in many of his novels.
Camp is a personal friend and hunting companion of fellow Minnesota author Chuck Logan.[12]
In 1989, Camp wrote two novels that would each spawn a popular series. The Fool's Run (Kidd series) was published under his own name, but the publisher asked him to provide a pseudonym for Rules of Prey ("Prey" series), so it was published under the name John Sandford. After the "Prey" series proved to be more popular, with its charismatic protagonist Lucas Davenport, The Fool's Run and all of its sequels were published under John Sandford.
In 2007, Camp started a third series (also under the name John Sandford), featuring Virgil Flowers, who is a supporting character in some of the "Prey" novels, including Invisible Prey and Storm Prey.
A fourth series, featuring Letty Davenport, daughter of Lucas Davenport of the "Prey" series, was launched in 2022.
Lucas Davenport is the protagonist of the "Prey" series. In the first three novels, he is a maverick detective with the Minneapolis Police Department. 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 (BCA), 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, later becoming a United States Marshal.
The novel Mind Prey was sold for a TV movie, and 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.
The protagonist of the series, Virgil Flowers, is described as tall, lean, late thirties, three times divorced, with long hair and often wearing t-shirts featuring rock bands. Virgil works at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Prior to the BCA he was in the Army and the military police, then the police in Saint Paul. Lucas Davenport, main character of the Prey series of books, recruited him into the BCA. Virgil is an avid outdoorsman who loves fishing and is often towing his boat, even when on duty. He is also a writer for outdoor and hunting magazines as well as a photographer.
Dark of the Moon (2007)
Heat Lightning (2008)
Rough Country (2009)
Bad Blood (2010)
Shock Wave (2011)
Mad River (2012)
Storm Front (2013)
Deadline (2014)
Escape Clause (2016)
Deep Freeze (2017)
Holy Ghost (2018)
Bloody Genius (2019)
Virgil Flowers also has a prominent role in Ocean Prey, Righteous Prey and Judgment Prey.
"Lucy Had a List." Published in Murder in the Rough: Original Tales of Bad Shots, Terrible Lies, and Other Deadly Handicaps from Today's Great Writers (2006), a short story anthology by notable authors, the fourth title in the sports mystery series edited by Otto Penzler. ISBN0-89296-017-5
