Bad Blood: Virgil Flowers Series, Book 4 [Kindle Edition]

In "Bad Blood" Virgil Flowers is brought in to investigate a strange murder at a rural Minnesota grain elevator. A farmer had pulled in with his truck of grain. The young man working at the elevator retrieves his baseball bat and sneaks up behind the farmer. He clobbers the unsuspecting man then tries to make his death look like an accident, but this killing was clearly premeditated. Flowers is called in to this area where murders rarely occur by the new sheriff, an attractive woman named Lee Coakley. There's clearly a spark struck between them from the start.

But no time for romance yet. Crimes must be investigated. Within the first 40 pages there are 4 deaths, the farmer, then the young man who supposedly killed the farmer, then the cop who was guarding the young man in jail. Flowers is puzzling over these sudden deaths when he hears about a 4th death; an unsolved murder of a young woman that took place down south of the town, just across the Iowa state line, a year ago. That killing looked like a sex crime. Virgil is intrigued.

He discovers a key link between these 4 deaths: every one of the dead belonged to a mysterious religious cult. Flowers digs deeper and begins to suspect that this "religion" conceals a vast and enduring front for widespread child abuse. No spoilers here; I'll leave the joys of Virgil's sleuthing and his budding relationship with the sheriff for readers to savor for themselves.

Sandford performs a bit of literary derring-do here. He has his wise cracking, fun loving Virgil trying to solve a case that might involve a most horrific network of pedophiles. Child abuse is not funny. Virgil is. The combo actually works. Virgil lightens it up just enough to make all the dark parts not quite as sickening. Sandford does a splendid job on this one.

This reviewer's favorite moments occur when Virgil is always prepared to argue scripture with any cult member who tries to fling the words of the Bible Virgil's way. Virgil is the son of a Lutheran minister. He knows his scripture inside and out. He has realized that these sicko religious nuts have taken selected passages from scripture to try to justify and validate their perverted faith. "T is a thing of beauty indeed.

I read the latest Lucas Davenport novel by sandford, which also came out this year. Although I enjoyed it, it had a problem with being a bit all over the map with plots, subplots and too many characters. Thus, I thought Sandford was winding down in his writing career. This, the best of the Virgil Flowers' novels, shows I couldn't have been more wrong. This book is very tightly focused, has just the right amount of characters and has a terrific plot to boot.

As usual, this is set in a section of Minnesota which is small town, rural and in which people are leading out of the mainstream lives. Last novel it was a town full of vacationing lesbians. This time it is a religious cult which has been home grown since the 1800s, which involves extreme sexual deviance. Suddenly, the town goes from one murder to four murders. All murder victims had some contact with the cult. This brings the state Criminal Bureau into town along with its lead roving detective, Virgil Flowers, who walks around town more like the roadie for some touring rock group than an investigator hunting down a cult. That he forgets to wear his gun most of the time is part of the problem and why he always has to drag out identification.

Many of the Virgil Flowers' books have a terrific shootout, like the OK Corral, occur at some point. This book has an absolute doozy of one, an all time high. Also one of the best vengeance scenes I've ever read.

This is Sandford at his best. I read it in 24 hours.

The Virgil Flowers series is a well-written, interesting, captivating series. Virgil is a lawman in Minnesota and gets involved in big cases. This one is about the separate but intertwined murders of four people, all of whom are involved in a small, fundamentalist, local religion which the members keep very private. Some of the members are involved in incest, rape, and sexual deviancy with children. It is up to Virgil and a local female sheriff to solve the murders and to save the children of the religious group who are being abused. John Sanford's writing is very good; he also writes the Prey series, and the Virgil Flowers series is a spinoff of the Prey series. This book held my attention all the way through and already has me salivating for the next in the series. The formatting for the Kindle is excellent. I highly recommend this book and series.