Deadline (A Virgil Flowers Novel) - John Sandford
Virgil Flowers got the call, just as one might expect, in the wee hours of the morning. Never mind that to reach his phone he had to crawl over the warm, willing female flesh lying in bed next to him, there was something more important afoot: a dognapper had snatched a pair of Labrador retrievers. Hey, I can relate – that’s damned important! Bright and early the next morning, Virgil found himself addressing a group of angry dog owners in the little Mississippi River town of Trippton. The locals were pretty sure who’d been snatching local dogs, but they needed help getting them back. Virgil reluctantly agreed to help – guess he’s not a dog person…
While investigating the missing pooches, Virgil and his local contact Johnson Johnson (brother of Mercury Johnson, though not of Evinrude Johnson) stumble over a meth-cooking operation. Great: now Virgil has an excuse to be in town! But wait, even while he waits for the DEA to raid the meth lab, a couple of kids stumble over the body of a local newspaper reporter. Something doesn’t add up, though – Virgil’s getting two entirely different stories about what was going on in Clancy Conley’s life, and that discrepancy is tickling his spidey sense.
If something is rotten in Buchanan County that Fuckin’ Flowers just stepped in it – and with all the dogs in town snatched in the middle of the night, that’s definitely not what he stepped in…
