Mad River (Virgil Flowers #6)

Love, love, love anything by John Sandford. I have every book in the Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers series. In Lucas Davenport we have a character fully developed from his earlier “womanizing” days to the more mature but still incredibly sexy family man who sometimes turns a blind eye to the nuances of the law while in pursuit of “justice”. He is made more human by his fear of air travel and his love of fashion. In Virgil Flowers we have a man whose actions and existence were shaped by his upbringing and YES..he is ALSO sexy. John Sandford has created two outstanding characters with a cast of “supporting players” equally outstanding. Each book revolves around some criminal activity (since these are lawmen, after all) and while those story lines are very good I feel the strength of these books lies in the portrayal of, and dialogue among the various characters.

I have been a big fan of John Sandfords’ “Prey’ books. Little did I know I would soon be completely hooked by his new crime solver Virgil Flowers. I have read 8 Virgil Flowers novels and now I am reading the rest of them in order. As a story goes this was very complex and interesting. Even tho there was no mystery as to who the bad guys were the book kept me interested and the action was fast paced. John Sanford is a master at making characters real and unique, and often disgusting in their behavior . I highly recommend this book.

What is truly fascinating about Sandford’s novels is sometimes we don’t know who the murderer is until the middle of the book. Sometimes its almost the end. Here, the murderer(s) are populating the very first pages, plotting a robbery that quickly spins out of control. In classic Sandford fashion, however, what we see in the opening pages is far from the whole story.

This is a lucky murder for us, though, because it occurs far away from Minneapolis/St. Paul — its in small-town Minnesota right down the road from where Virgil Flowers grew up. He comes onto the scene in time to discovery mayhem aplenty. He uses his “outside of the box” Virgil methods of detection to help him solve the case. I don’t want to give too much away, but who but Virgil Flowers would travel to the state prison to quiz a group of inmates about what they’d do if they were hiding out?

I read this book over three days (that’s fast for me), and I can attest that it is a solid Virgil Flowers effort. If you’ve read the last five Virgil Flowers novels (can you believe there have already been five?), then you, like me, probably can’t wait until the next one comes out. We learn a little more about Virgil with every novel. We already knew that Virgil goes to sleep at night thinking about God. In this novel, we get to meet Virgil’s parents (his father is a small-town pastor). We also get a better understanding of Virgil’s ethics as a person and a cop. Here you’ll learn that, in many respects, that Virgil is almost the opposite of Lucas Davenport — which I suspect is exactly what Sandford had in mind.

I see from reading other reviews that some have criticized the writing style here, and I, too noticed that these books “feel” different from the Prey novels. I’m not really sure what it is, but I suspect it can be linked to the fact that Sandford has used various “collaborators” with each of the VF novels. As I understand things, however, the writing is 100% Sandford (none of that James Patterson book factory mess) and his fingerprints (meticulous plotting, the development of the recurring characters, and that quirky Minnesota sense of humor) are all over this one.

The suspense and the plot that you have come to love from Sandford — they’re here in spades. If you liked the last five, you’ll love this one. Oh – and I think this could be the first VF novel without a reference to “That Effing Flowers.” That was this novel’s only disappointment.

As you start into this book, like most of Sandford’s books, you get the impression there is not a lot of action. But soon you notice that several people have been killed. One killer seems to be clearly identified. Is there another killer? My favorite super cool detective, Virgil Flowers, heads out toward the southwestern corner of Minnesota to track down the twenty-something “kids” believed to have murdered another young lady. The scene is near his parents’ home but this is an area where towns are geographically not far apart but separated by vast distances socially. We see the range of social strata from dirt poor to quite well-off. The poor people see the richer people and want to get their things. We meet three young losers who think anything owned by others is fair game for them to improve the comfort in their lives. Their first crime supposedly begins as an attempt to steal a diamond necklace. But they never really have much of a chance of that. They do end up killing a woman which seems incidental but turns out to be the reason their leader has money and a gun. He was hired to kill the woman by her estranged husband. The action is mostly a search for these young criminals as they leave a string of dead bodies including the body of a cop shot during a robbery. This brings all the cops in the southern 1/3 of Minnesota looking for blood.

The cops final kill two of the young kids in cold blood. Virgil calls them out on it on regional TV as the smoke clears. Their action makes it nearly impossible for him to prove the facts in another murder. There are many amusing and enlightening views of the people in this area of the country. Remember: this is not too far removed from Gary Keilor’s Lake Wobegone!

I have read all of John Sandfords books about Lucas davenport and Virgil Flowers. So far 28 books. I have never tried his series about Kidd so I cant compare to that one. Sandford is a great writer. Not only does he take a number of almost ordinary crimes and make a mystery out of that but the people in his books are for the bad guys believable and for the good ones people you like without any exaggerations.

This book is about Virgil Flowers again. He has to deal with a number of crazy teenagers that for some reason just kill people and then start to run. Maybe there are to many killings but each one of them is explained in a logical way. We get to follow Virgil in his hunt for these killers but also his dealings with the media and the woman he always wanted to have. It is a very nice ride, a lot of humor but also a lot of police work and horror details. The ending is a surprise but also a nice change to the usual type of ending where everyone gets caught and punished.

Two days of easy reading and you will think that was well spent time. I look forward to the next Virgil Flowers adventure.

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