Dark of the Moon (Virgil Flowers Series #1) by John Sandford

From Barnes & Noble

Somebody is killing old people in Bluestem, Minnesota. When star Minnesota cop Virgil Flowers arrives in town to investigate the murder of an elderly couple, the local police chief invites him to help search for the slayer of another aged person, Bill Judd. Aware that octogenarians aren't the usual targets of serial killers, Lucas Davenport's ace assistant begins probing for this strange geriatric backlash. It doesn't take him long to realize that the friendly little town conceals some big, ugly secrets.

From the Publisher

Three murders in just as many weeks in the quiet rural town of Bluestream is unheard of. It's also no coincidence. And it's not over: Detective Virgil Flowers is about to be pulled into the middle of a killer's violent personal vendetta.

Publishers Weekly

What a pleasure to find a novel with an upbeat hero paired with a reader who is more interested in telling a story well than in demonstrating the outer limits of his vocal range. Far from the usual cynical, borderline-depressed investigator, Virgil Flowers is a likable, hang-loose sort of sleuth who enjoys life and seems to relish handling the "hard stuff" for his boss, Lucas Davenport (Sandford's Preyseries hero makes a brief cameo). Flowers's assignment is to investigate several gruesome murders in a small town. Unlike the harder-edged Preyseries, Moonis more of an entertainment, allowing Flowers to supplement his determined quest for justice with witty conversation and several romantic interludes. Conger matches the lighter moods with a mellow, almost mesmerizing matter-of-fact delivery, adjusting his vocal range just slightly to differentiate speakers. But when the action demands it-such as the grim opening murder scene or the suspenseful storming of the cult leader's encampment-Conger's voice takes on a properly hardboiled intensity. Simultaneous release with the Putnam hardcover (Reviews, July 23). (Oct.)

Kirkus Reviews

Virgil Flowers, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator introduced as a sidekick to Lucas Davenport in Invisible Prey (2007), gets a death-enriched case of his own. In a little town like Bluestem, everybody knows everybody's business, and what everybody knows these days is that everybody's getting killed. The flagship victim is Bill Judd, 82, the wealthy lawyer/banker/trader who made enemies right and left with a Jerusalem artichoke pyramid scheme 20 years ago. He's an obvious target for the methodical arsonist who burned down his house with him inside. But the other victims are much more inoffensive: ancient physician Russell Gleason and his wife, retired Stark County sheriff Roman Schmidt and his wife. The current sheriff, Jimmy Stryker, doesn't mind working with a BCA type like Virgil. He doesn't even mind the sidelong gazes Virgil casts at his recently divorced sister, Joan Carson. And he brings up his share of promising ideas about the case, which involves money laundering, a meth lab, a surprise claimant to the Judd estate and a truly nasty man of the cloth. But could he be the target of his own manhunt? The advanced age of the victims makes Virgil think that the crimes could have deep roots-maybe as deep as a "man on the moon" party Bill Judd hosted back in 1969. Sadly, it seems to take another 38 years for Virgil and company, making endless rounds of Bluestem to ask really obvious questions, to close the case. The pace is so much slower than when Davenport is in charge that you may wonder if Virgil, a perfectly reasonable hero, is under sedation. It's not until the Acknowledgments, which are deferred till the end of the story, that this last and deepest mysteryis cleared up. A high-fatality, low-octane procedural that has its points but lacks the wow factor. Bring back Lucas Davenport. First printing of 500,000

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