Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)

Another great entry in the Virgil Flowers series. I love the quirkiness of the small town Minnesota settings and the weird and crazy characters. There’s a bit of formula to these stories, but that’s part of the reason I read series mystery fiction. Flowers is a likable character and the cast of family and friends are funny and believable. The small town politics and the dark but funny ne’er do wells that populate this series are always well done. On thing that Sandford manages is to create a host of characters that I never find confusing, they are well drawn by swift and deft descriptions that make them easily followable. Not an easy thing to do. In this entry Flowers revisits the town where he uncovered a conspiracy of the local elites to skim cash from the school system. This time he’s chasing the murderer of a woman who was not very well liked, meanwhile, with Sandford’s patented tongue-in-cheek style, a private investigator is tying to track down a woman who is adulterating Barbie and Ken dolls in a creepy way. These books remind me of the British cozy mysteries where every town has a dark underbelly and a host of rivalries and secrets. A lot of laugh out loud moments and some intense action, though these are essentially character driven books. I always look forward to these and ususally read them in a day or two. A real page-turner.

I don’t know how John Sandford does it. His novels are compulsively readable, and un-put-down-able. The book I read before this took me an entire weekend and several days out of the ensuing week. I finished Deep Freeze in three evenings, after work.

The Sandford formula is not complex. Someone in rural Minnesota commits a murder; the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (Is there really such a thing?) dispatches veteran investigator Virgil Flowers, and through his knowledge accumulated through experience, he solves the crime. The stories always unfold in a smooth, water-streaming-downhill flow.

In Deep Freeze, readers know who the killer is before knowing there’s been a crime. Flowers arrives in Trippton, Minnesota–a town he’s visited before– to look into matters. En route, he is directed by a Federal colleague to aid an investigation into the illegal manufacture and distribution of talking Barbie dolls that have been altered to say some naughty things. Thus the exasperated Virgil rattled the entire population of Trippton by looking into two vastly different crimes at the same time. Does he solve them both? Well, my friends, books are out there to be read. I can promise that reading Deep Freeze is like sitting down in a comfortable chair with a party sized bag of chips, vowing to eat only a few, and then the next thing you know, the bag is empty. An enormously fun and easy read, and a worthy entry in the Sandford canon.

I listened to the audio-book and it was a great novel. For this book the suspect is revealed early so the focus is on the interaction of the characters and the developing events. Virgil and his supporting cast continues to provide hours of entertainment as the story develops. I liked how the author handled the approach to this novel and it was interesting that he returned to Tripton for this book. I like the portrayal of small town life and think it is interesting that after so many books where Virgil was enjoying the single life for the past 3 novels he looks like he may be putting down roots and is entertaining starting a family. I recommend this book for the Virgil Flowers fans but recommend for the newcomers that they start from book 1 in the series or you will be missing some good books, this is good but not the best in this series.

I don’t enjoy any books as much as I enjoy John Sanford’s books. First, the characters are always such a great blend of regular guy and analytical thinkers. I love to “watch” them figure out the crime. And then there’s the crimes. They’re not your typical thriller crimes, but they have twists and turns and usually there’s a secondary, less serious crime and they both keep me guessing. My favorite part of any Sanford book is that moment when you see it all coming together for Virgil (or Lucas) and you know the rest of the book is going to be a wild ride and you’re going to have to finish it in one setting. It’s like an action movie then and you can only watch and see how it all turns out. Never finished one where I didn’t feel like I had just spent time watching a good friend solve a crime.

If you have never read a Virgil Flowers book, this is as a good a place to start as any. If you have never read John Sandford….as crazy as that might sound….this is a good book to start with. Having read All books by John Sandford having to do with Virgil Flowers and Lucas Davenport, I have to say that when it comes to that effin Flowers? This is again a masterpiece. It’s high praise for a reader to tell an audience and the author, I don’t know how you keep delivering, but please keep delivering. Great story line. Great humor and great characters. It’s a who dunnit book in the frozen north of Minnesota and someone gets killed. Flowers is sent in to figure out what’s what. Along the way he gets into a fight or two, forgets his gun once or twice, remembers his gun once or twice, avoids getting killed, works on a murder, and delivers his classic one liners, out loud and silently, where we the reader laugh out loud at the subtle but brilliant humor and sense of humor. For those of you, again, who have never read a book by this guy? Get this book. I pre ordered it months ago, and waited. I was not disappointed. Just the opposite. It’s just a well done book.

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