Agent Virgil Flowers and his girlfriend Frankie Nobles
were just about to get frisky, when Frankie's sister
Sparkle (née Wanda) drops in. Sparkle is doing her PhD
dissertation on seasonal migrant workers at Castro's
Canning Factory, where not everything is kosher. Not much
later, Virgil gets a phone call from his Bureau of
Criminal Apprehension boss that two Amur tigers, an
endangered species, have been stolen from the Minnesota
Zoo, and they need to be brought back alive asap. How
hard could it be to find two large felines in a small
suburban town. Plenty hard, it turns out.
The latest Virgil
Flowers book, ESCAPE CLAUSE, will
naturally delight fans of the series, but it might also
appeal to Carl Hiaasen's faithful readers, as Virgil's
case leans on the demented side of things, thanks to a
charismatic and entirely revolting villain. ESCAPE CLAUSE
possesses a touch of surrealism in the person of one of
the bumbling fools who kidnap the tigers. They're all in
for the money, but it's the Xanax-popping sociopath who
nearly steals Virgil's thunder. The bad guy's chemical-
addled brain provides definite entertainment, if often of
the stomach-churning variety. ESCAPE CLAUSE is on one
hand a pretty straightforward and realistic police
procedural, while on the other a gory nightmare. Mr.
Sandford's vivid descriptions establish an environment
that seems so real, and at times so dramatically clear,
that I felt a bit sick to my stomach. The kidnappers
might be somewhat clueless, but the leader is alarmingly
scary. There are some rather graphic and grisly scenes
that some readers might not wish to experience; I was a
bit taken aback myself, but what a fascinating portrait
of a sociopath!
The search for the missing tigers becomes a real
nightmare for Virgil as he has to sift through quacks,
who supposedly practice traditional medicine, a blood-
thirsty animal activist who has some dangerous enemies,
and Sparkle's activities add to the confusing
investigation. As always, we find John Sandford's snappy
dialogues, a complex plot that unfolds smoothly, and
while the pace is brisk, it takes a while for Virgil to
find his way out of the maze of clues he's faced with.
I'm not entirely sure why the author included Sparkle's
side story, other than to add to the myriad players on
the scene. The main villain though is an extraordinary
creation: the efficient psychopath who slowly unravels is
morbidly engrossing. I had figured out part of the
ending, but not the very clever how. I really liked one
of the characters so much, policewoman Catrin Mattsson,
that I would like to see her feature more prominently.
ESCAPE CLAUSE is riveting, chilling, and at times, let's
be blunt: gross, but definitely never boring!
Whenever you hear the sky rumble, that usually means a
storm. In Virgil Flowers’ case, make that two. The
exceptional new thriller from the writer whose books
are “pure reading pleasure” (Booklist)
The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota
zoo. Two large, and very rare, Amur tigers have vanished
from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that
they’ve been stolen for their body parts. Traditional
Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and
people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some
of them are a great deal more extreme than others -- as Vi
Virgil is about to find out.
Then there’s the home front. Virgil’s relationship with his
girlfriend Frankie has been getting kind of serious, but
when Frankie’s sister Sparkle moves in for the summer, the
situation gets a lot more complicated. For one thing, her
research into migrant workers is about to bring her up
against some very violent people who emphatically do not
want to be researched. For another...she thinks Virgil’s k
kind of cute.
“You mess around with Sparkle,” Frankie told
Virgil, “you could get yourself stabbed.”
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