John Sanford was recommended to me by my good friend, Ron Mc Clure, who is rarely right but this time, he hit the bulls eye, as Sandford is fun. This novel begins in the small town of Bluestem, just outside of Minneapolis, as a wealthy but intensely disliked man named Judd dies in an explosion in his house. And a couple of weeks earlier, there had been another seemingly unrelated murder, two in fact, a doctor and his wife, who was found propped up in his yard. Virgil begins to smell out the connection, thus the story. Sanford, fortunately, is the master at creating an interesting character in Virgil, thrice married but still interested in women, who works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, BCA for short hand.
There are clearly plenty of people who hate Judd, as he milked just about everyone in a get rich scheme to make money from ethanol. Everyone seems to have lost money but for Judd. Neighbors, high school friends, even the editor of the local newspaper are suspects in the killing and we are pulled along by the dialogue, the interesting narrative, the character of Virgil until the end, when we are led, by logic and reason, to the editor, Williamson, who happens to have been the illegitimate son of Judd, out to avenge the death of his mother at the hands of Judd. But we don't know till the very end who done it, one of the hallmarks, I assume, of Sandford's books. A good read, I am ready for the next novel, HEAT LIGHTNING. O, yea, I forgot, Virgil beds at couple of honeys along the way, just keep the male readers' interested.
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