Mad River

John Sandford is a story teller and his series has added Virgil Flowers to his on-going set of characters.  Virgil is a detective put on special cases.  He is a rural guy who has a tenacity that helps him with particularly tough cases.

In this novel he is up against a set of young killers - modern day misguided Bonnie and Clydes who set off on a killing spree that has the entire state upset and a vigilante sheriff's department in particular anger.

Virgil finds their killing spree something easy to solve - they did it, but what is not easy to determine is where they are.  The frustration of knowing they are near, but not being able to find them wears on everyone's nerves and sets the deputies in a kill on site mode - especially after a policeman goes down.

Virgil, on the other hand, knows that there is another person who triggered this spree, a person who paid for the first killing and that person will go free if the trigger happy killers are killed.  We see the frustration and we worry along with Virgil that vigilante justice will undo the justice needed to get the real triggerman.

We travel in SW MN and the small towns and unpopulated counties in a wonderfully written story that forced me to be up most of one night because I could not stop.  Good dialogue, good characters and a pace of narrative that is addictive.