Sometimes you can't escape the claws

Sometimes you can't escape claws...
Title:  Escape Clause by John Sandford (Virgil Flowers, #9 )
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons 400 pp October 2016
Genre: mystery, thriller fiction,
5 stars
Author:
From Amazon author list: John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-six Prey novels, most recently Extreme Prey; four Kidd novels; nine Virgil Flowers novels; three YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook; and three stand-alones, most recently Saturn Run.
Story line:
Virgil Flowers, my favourite investigator for the MN Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), is back for another roller coaster ride. We moved from dognapping to catnapping- with endangered tigers stolen from the Mn Zoo. Everyone else is involved in politics at the state fair (leftover from the last Davenport Prey book). Virgil gets the short straw as body counts rise, brutal attack occur and bombs go off.
I always looks for the references of either Davenport or Flowers depending on the book series, and this doesn't disappoint. I don't think of it as a spinoff either, Virgil feels more like a real MN cop: tough, smart, long haired (farmer), quirky Midwestern boy. Love the cultural t-shirt references. He does the legwork, finds the clues, thinks through the larger pictures and gets his sociopath, without a gun, if at all possible. The cat helped.
I read this in one sitting, relieved to be laughing more with Virgil's engaging antics and comments. Several of the Flowers books have been very dark indeed. The Midwest realism works on all levels, from the swimming hole to the immigrant factory to the traffic. Small town life contrasts seething political issues, with good commentary and further thought. This book will not disappoint.
Read on:
To the first Virgil Flowers Dark of the Moon, or the Prey Series.
If you like Lee Child (Jack Reacher), Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch) or David Baldacci (John Puller) series.
Quotes:
“You must be the famous Virgil fuckin’ Flowers.”
Virgil could feel his heart clogging up with grease as he finished the sandwich,
New Ulm was getting more like LA every single day, Virgil thought.
“Did you have a gun with you?” Davenport asked. “Yeah.” “You didn’t shoot it, did you?” “No.” “There’s the fuckin’ Flowers we all know and love,” Davenport said.
.....but they had the IQs of small rocks.
“It’s another one of your damn Twin Cities murders that you keep unloading on us,” the sheriff said. “If he’d dropped the refrigerator fifteen feet west, it’d technically be a Minnesota case, which it should be.” “You’re breaking my heart,” Virgil said.
“Why do your cases always wind up like this?” Duncan asked, running a hand through his hair. “Why can’t you have a straightforward missing-tigers case?”
....had physically frozen on a street corner. For nearly half an hour, he’d been unable to pick up a foot to move. Since it was St. Paul, nobody had noticed.
“I gotta think,” Virgil said. “I mean, I am thinking, but I’m not coming up with anything.”
“Beer, weed, and skinny-dipping,” Bill said. He sounded happy about it. “It is just sort of Minnesota in the summertime, isn’t it?”
“If it was anyone else, I wouldn’t believe it. With you, I think, ‘Yeah, probably,’ ” she said.

Received as an ARC ebook from Netgalley.