Bad Blood by John Sandford. Library Call number: PS3569.A516 B33 2010.
This novel features Flowers investigating a murder in southern Minnesota that looks, at first glance, fairly open and shut. A soybean farmer is found buried in the beans at a grain elevator. It doesn’t take long to see the accident was staged, and only a few hours more before the elevator employee, arrested on suspicion, is found murdered in his cell. His murder looks like the work of a sheriff’s deputy, a close friend of the farmer; when the deputy turns up dead at home, a third murder--this one made to look like suicide--Virgil has a trio to clear up. He finds they all seem to be tied to the recent, vicious rape and murder of a young girl from the area and to a strange religious cult. Sandford’s novels always move at a breakneck speed and this one will keep you up late, trying to fit in one more chapter in before sleep.
