Review of "Deadline: A Virgil Flowers Thriller" by John Sandford

 

Virgil Flowers thrillers are spinoffs from John Sandford's 'Prey' series featuring Lucas Davenport - the lead investigator for Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).



Virgil Flowers is also a detective for the BCA, and Lucas is his boss. In this 8th book in the 'Virgil Flowers' series, the investigator gets involved in three cases, which range from dogs to drugs to murder.



*****

As the novel opens, these are dark days for dog lovers in southeast Minnesota. A ring of dog thieves are kidnapping pooches from their homes and selling them on the black market and to research labs. One of the dognappers is a scoundrel called D. Wayne Sharf, who's adept at snatching canines.



D. Wayne has just stolen Winky Butterfield's two beloved black labs, and Winky is bereft, angry, and vengeful.



Flowers' fishing buddy Johnson Johnson asks Virgil to catch the dog thieves and retrieve the missing canines, or else a group of vigilantes will take the law into their own hands.



Flowers' hunt for the stolen dogs takes him up into the hills of southeast Minnesota.....



.....where Virgil comes across a commercial meth lab housed in a trailer.



While Virgil is combing the Minnesota bluffs for stolen dogs and drug manufacturers, he happens to meet a local boy called Muddy Ruff. Muddy is an observant, rifle-toting twelve-year-old who knows the area well, and the boy is very helpful to Virgil and the drug-busting Feds.



While all this going on, a murder occurs in Trippton, Minnesota. The victim is a journalist called Clancy Connelly, who has unearthed an embezzlement scheme being perpetrated by the Buchanon County School Board.



The school board members - ALL of whom are supposedly upstanding citizens - have been stealing at least one million dollars per year by inflating prices for gas (for school buses) and by perpetrating other larcenous schemes.



When the school board members learn Connelly is about to expose them, they hold a meeting and vote to kill him. Connelly is shot in the back before he can file his report, and Flowers is called in to investigate.



Flowers soon becomes suspicious of the school board, and he takes steps - sometimes involving threats - to unmask the board members as thieves and killers.



The embezzlers become exceedingly nervous, which leads to more homicides, and Virgil himself becomes a target. (Who knew school boards were so ruthless‽‽)



The Virgil Flowers novels mix humor with crime-solving, and "That F****n' Flowers" (Virgil's nickname) is a fierce investigator with a heart of gold.



Even dogs know this, which leads to a great finale for this thriller.



This is a good suspense novel, highly recommended.

Rating: 3.5 stars