Rough Country

I’m a John Sandford fan. There’s no doubt about that. I love his Lucas Davenport character, and was iffy about his last book featuring another character – Virgil Flowers – as his main protagonist in Dark of the Moon. Though it moves like lightning, Sandford keeps you guessing, and the pages kept on turning, it was a big meh for me. Virgil seemed bland despite his quirks, the women were one-dimensional, and I didn’t like his love interests. At all.

But that’s all changed with Rough Country

That fuckin’ Flowers, as he is known affectionately in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, has come into his own. Virgil is fully fleshed out and his quirks are amusing (instead of getting on my nerves and making me mutter to myself: Grow the fuck up, Virgil! Yes, yes, I do know he’s a fictional character.) and in more than a few scenes I laughed out loud. He fishes on BCA time, he pulls a fishing boat behind his BCA vehicle, and he sleeps with attractive women every chance he gets – and sometimes they’re suspects in the crimes he’s investigating.

But that doesn’t mean there’s not plenty of suspense and mystery in this novel. This time around with Virgil, Sandford has tightened up the storyline, and it all rings true.

Virgil’s competing in a fishing tournament when he gets a call from Lucas Davenport to investigate a murder at a nearby woman-only resort. Virgil finds a second, related murder, and then the fun really begins. There’s a bisexual country music singer who is seemingly linked to the crimes, the waiters at the resort double as paid boytoys, and the gorgeous accountant at the resort is in love with the country singer and tangled up in a peripheral way with another suspect. In a twist that I found particularly amusing, Virgil just can’t get a break when it comes to his own love life.

I enjoyed the hell out of Rough Country. I read and read until the wee hours of the morning, even though I knew I had to be up at 7 am the next day.

It was worth the missed sleep.

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