Rough Country by
John Sandford
Erica McDill paddled her canoe out to watch the eagles return to their nest at sunset. She never came back. Virgil Flowers was on a boat of his own when he got the call, only a couple of hours into a big muskie fishing tournament. Virgil never came back, either. The difference was that, a few hours later, a very alive Flowers stood looking at a very dead McDill.
In Virgil Flowers' experience, murder is usually about sex or money; and McDill seemed to have plenty of both. The Eagle's Nest Lodge near Grand Rapids (the one in Minnesota, not the one in Michigan) began as a family joint; but a while back the owners had converted the Lodge to a high-end, women-only resort and the place had thrived. Though not officially a hangout for wealthy North Woods lesbians, a good chunk of the clientele had always been either full-time residents or visitors to "the island," McDill among them.
Nothing back home in St. Paul looked suspicious and the setting of the killing seemed to indicate a local, so Virgil began his investigation by nosing around the Eagle's Nest and the Grand Rapids lesbian community - a community that substantially overlapped with the local music scene. That overlap was mainly due to one person: the top local band's lead singer, Wendy Asbach, a brash, brawling blonde C & W type with a set of pipes to die for. So, the number one question: did McDill die for them?
Virgil Flowers commenced to do what Virgil does best: he poked his nose into enough people's business and turned over enough rocks to build a case, and then he let nature run its course. Witness and suspect interviews were a little tougher than usual for Virgil this time, though, since the cop who looks like a surfer dude (blond hair that's a little too long, tight faded jeans, and a string of rock concert tee shirts) figured out that good looks and an "Aww, shucks, ma'am" style just didn't seem to work as well on these particular women. Well, they worked fine on one of ‘em's sister: now, if he could just get his cell phone to stop ringing at all the wrong times...
| Rough Country, John Sandford's third Virgil Flowers novel (after Heat Lightning and Dark of the Moon), finds Lucas Davenport's go-to guy still wandering around Minnesota's back roads in a state pickup truck, pulling a private boat. He's also still more inclined to leave his sidearm under the seat of the truck than under his arm, and he still has enough of an anti-authoritarian streak to sleep with witnesses and the occasional suspect - that he doesn't this time is probably more a result of the sexual preference of most of the women in Rough Country than for lack of trying.
Given the small-town setting of the McDill murder, Flowers truly doesn't have much to work with - and that means neither does Sandford. A single red herring is pretty much all that separates readers from an open-and-shut case, and identifying the killer on about page 100; even with the stinky fish it's still close. So Sandford has to find other ways to pad out the plot. I lost track how many times Flowers had to backtrack because his chief local source, Zoe Tull, "neglected" to tell him yet another interesting factoid - one of which in fact turned out to be important, but the rest of which were just more distractions. All of that means that, while the two previous novels featuring Virgil were not only fun, they were also good mysteries that kept readers guessing. This time, though, the fun factor is just as prevalent but the mystery element is pretty ho-hum. |
As ever, Sandford keeps up a running patter for his character . Clearly, Virgil was ADD as a child (consider that he doesn't sleep, and he doesn't seem to be able to concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes at a time - except fishing). We learn that Virgil detests the Dixie Chicks (probably more a Clear Channel thing on Sandford's part than a music critic thing, since Virgil thinks Leann Rimes is the bomb); we also get minor insights into his three ex-wives. Unlike the previous two novels, though, Virgil has little luck with the ladies this time - however Sandford spins Virgil's frustrations into an amusing secondary thread. The problem with
Rough Country, unfortunately, is that this thread is almost as engaging as the murder mystery. For that, Virgil loses half a star...
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