Bad Blood: A
Virgil Flowers Novel
John Sanford
Putnum, 2010
978-0-399-15690-8
Hard Cover
388
Thriller
Virgil
Flowers
Virgil
Flowers, the detective everyone loves but hates, because trouble seems to
follow him wherever he goes, has a puzzle on his hands that even he doesn't
even like the feel of. But doing what he does best―Virgil finds trouble wherever he goes, along with interesting women and a
litany of other characters. This time, however, the trouble has already raised
its mighty head. Virgil has 4 dead bodies in one very small Michigan town and
virtually nothing to move forward on. So, he keeps knocking on doors and
reporting his progress at lunch at the local diner, looking for some way in; he
wants a way into the problem, something, anything that will produce a crack in
the invisible shield that surrounds the town and its mysterious church. Oh,
Virgil can guess. In fact, he's pretty sure he knows exactly what is going on.
But it's so heinous, so unbelievably wrong, that he can't bring himself to
accept it until he and the local sheriff find some proof.
Virgil
Flowers, otherwise known as that fucking
flowers, is quite the character. A maverick who owns an endless supply of
inappropriate T-shirts for the job he does. That job is lead investigator for
Lucas Davenport of the Prey Novels. Other
than being a fellow with absolutely no pretenses, Virgil could be a young
Davenport, with his unrelenting focus on each case he works, with his
propensity for rule breaking and for a type
of charisma that simply wins people over.
Bad Blood is
not a wild ride. It's not even the thriller that the Dust Jacket claims it is.
Bad Blood is a police procedural. John Sanford marches his character(s) through
a step by step process that cannot help but isolate the core problem and crack
it open like a nut. Even with the almost unbelievable scope of the crime(s)
Virgil Flowers must solve, I still felt as though each step taken was a step
that must be taken, that this was how police work is actually done. Now, that's
a suspension of belief!
John
Sandford's Bad Blood develops more of his hot new character, Virgil Flowers, in
one hell of a case. How could a fan not like that?
Copyright ©
2013 Clayton Clifford Bye
For more of Clayton Bye's writing, visit his website or become a fan.
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