• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2009 August #1
  Erica McDill is the newly ascended CEO of one of the Twin Cities' most prominent ad agencies. She's taken a few days out of her schedule to recharge at an exclusive northern Minnesota resort catering primarily to wealthy women who may be looking for a fling in between nature hikes. Whatever her vacation plans, she doesn't anticipate her own death at the hands of a sniper. Her prominence in the community leads the governor to hand the case to Lucas Davenport and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Davenport assigns the job to his best investigator, Virgil Flowers, whose investigatory technique is textbook but who fosters a reputation for eccentricity with surfer-dude hair and a working uniform of cowboy boots, jeans, and rock-band T-shirts. Virgil has a plethora of motives to sift through. Was McDill's murderer a bitter business rival? An anonymous lover at the resort? Her longtime partner? A couple of days into the investigation, Flowers learns that a former guest of the resort was murdered in Iowa two years earlier. Is there a connection? Best-selling author Sandford seems to be having more fun these days with Flowers than Davenport, the protagonist in the long-running Prey series. And why not? Each of Flowers' cases reveals more quirks, more depth, and a wicked sense of the absurd, as well as an investigator who can be as analytical as Nero Wolfe and as tough as everybody's favorite Boston badass, Spenser. Great entertainment. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

John Sandford is also the author of nineteen Prey novels and eight other books.