Review: Bad Blood | A novel by John Sandford
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Read in airports and during down time on a trip to Santa Fe, Bad Blood wasn't a dull read. It's lively, provocative – even intriguing, in a revolting way. Veteran journalist-turned-novelist John Sandford displays an adroit touch with plot and pacing, for which he might merit four stars.
And then there is Virgil Flowers – that *expletive* Flowers (think alliteration here) – and by Page 19 Lee Coakley, the distaff sheriff who's 6 feet tall in her turquoise-studded cowboy boots, is squinting at him through her green eye while scrutinizing him with her blue eye. The red-headed sheriff sizes up Flowers, unruly blond hair and innocent cowboy grin, and coolly utters, "I'm a trained investigator: I sense a certain level of bullshit here."
Indeed. Flowers is the irreverent son of a Lutheran minister and a freelance investigator for a Minnesota state police agency. When we and Lee Coakley meet him, he's winterizing his boat in 15-degree weather. A 19-year-old high school athlete has just delivered a fatal blow with a T-ball bat to the skull of a soybean farmer, setting into motion a jail hanging, an interstate flight from danger, the unearthing of a grisly cold case, and revelations of deep, hideous secrets practiced by the World of Spirit, a cult of farm families that's so protective of its own that Flowers must drop crumbs – unprofessionally – at the local diner to see where they might lead.
Sheriff Coakley is a largely effective foil to Sandford's serial detective in Bad Blood, but the romance between the pair blooms a bit early for the book's own good, and the plot – alternately engrossing and grotesque – flames out in a way that extinguishes the reader's desire to return to the Flowers series anytime soon.
Bad Blood is passable travel entertainment, but you needn't spend time at home with this procedural roam: There is, at most, one slightly interesting side character in the entire novel, the villains are stock-still wooden, and Virgil Flowers, irreverent sage that he is, is no Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee. John Sandford, alas, is no Tony Hillerman; in hindsight, I should have heeded my first instinct and taken a Hillerman classic with me to New Mexico.
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Hell hath no fury like Homestead, Minnesota (fictionally speaking)
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