Deadline (Virgil Flowers Series #8)

by John Sandford

Overview

In southeast Minnesota, a school board meeting is coming to an end. The chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed to only a few—for personal issues. The remaining members vote on the fate of a local reporter.  And it’s unanimous…
 
Kill him.
 
Meanwhile, Virgil Flowers is investigating a dognapping crime wave in a Mississippi River town when he gets a call from Lucas Davenport. A corpse has been found, and the victim is local reporter Clancy Conley. Virgil has no idea where this is all headed. All he knows for sure is that things are getting nasty in Buchanan County.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425275184
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/06/2015
Series:	Virgil Flowers Series , #8
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	37,843
Product dimensions:	4.19(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.94(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-six Prey novels, most recently Extreme Prey; four Kidd novels; nine Virgil Flowers novels; three YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook; and three stand-alones, most recently Saturn Run.

Hometown:

St. Paul, Minnesota

Date of Birth:

February 23, 1944

Place of Birth:

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Education:

State University of Iowa, Iowa City: B.A., American History; M.A., Journalism

Website:

http://www.johnsandford.org

Read an Excerpt

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Excerpted from "Deadline"
by .
Copyright © 2015 John Sandford.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Deadline

“Another brainy thriller from a prolific author, ‘Deadline’ fulfills readers’ expectations of Sandford’s fiction: tense, smart and character-driven.” — Richmond Times Dispatch

“Rich characters [and] the descriptions of small-town life, politics and corruption and the concurrent trails of action make for a fast and entertaining read.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
“Sandford's best Flowers book to date. . . . There is a lot of drama and mayhem in this story and readers of traditional Sandford books will be satisfied for sure. Still if you like a little humor in your plots, this book will more than sate that desire. This book is the most fun I have had reading in a long time.”—Huffington Post

“There’s a lot going on in Deadline . . . The biggest joys of this series are Flowers himself (his boss is Lucas Davenport from the Sandford's Prey novels), the cast of eccentric supporting characters and the humorous dialogue.”—Shelf Awareness

“Sandford keeps one last surprise up his sleeve for the denouement of the dognapping case, and it's a doozy. Exhilaratingly professional work by both Virgil and his creator that breaks no new ground but will keep the fans happy and add to their number.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Stellar . . . Sandford is an accomplished and amusing storyteller, and he nails both the rural characters and terrain as well as he has skewered urban life in past installments.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Sanford balances straight-talking Virgil Flowers’ often hilariously folksy tone and Trippton’s dark core of methamphetamine manufacturers and sociopaths; the result is pure reading pleasure for thriller fans.”—Booklist

Praise for Storm Front
 
“John Sandford has the Midas touch. [Storm Front is] exciting, complex and funny all the way through. Virgil is a unique character [and] the beauty of Sandford’s writing is that the narrative of the book is told in perfect harmony with Flowers’ personality . . . Entertaining reading all the way.” —The Huffington Post

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Deadline
 “Sandford keeps one last surprise up his sleeve for the denouement of the dognapping case, and it's a doozy. Exhilaratingly professional work by both Virgil and his creator that breaks no new ground but will keep the fans happy and add to their number.”—Kirkus Reviews“Stellar . . . Sandford is an accomplished and amusing storyteller, and he nails both the rural characters and terrain as well as he has skewered urban life in past installments.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Sanford balances straight-talking Virgil Flowers’ often hilariously folksy tone and Trippton’s dark core of methamphetamine manufacturers and sociopaths; the result is pure reading pleasure for thriller fans.”—Booklist

From the Publisher

There are plenty of fictional cops and private eyes with anger issues, woman troubles and drinking problems. And then there's Virgil Flowers…He leaves the big-time crime-busting to his boss in Minneapolis, Lucas Davenport…so he can grab the fun assignments for himself…Despite Virgil's casual air, Sandford's humor isn't flip. He sees Trippton's battered trailer homes, the live pit bulls and dead cars in the yards and the no-trespassing signs at the gates, along with all the signs of misery other regional authors record in their novels. But there's compassion in his gaze and genuine affection in his raucous laughter.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

★ 08/11/2014
In Thriller Award–winner Sandford’s stellar eighth Virgil Flowers novel (after 2013’s Storm Front), the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent, who works for Lucas Davenport, the hero of the author’s other major series, helps friend Johnson Johnson with a little problem that keeps growing in the Mississippi River town of Trippton. Johnson’s neighbors are concerned about a series of dognappings by hillbillies who live up by inaccessible Orly’s Creek. Roy Zorn, a “small-time motorcycle hood,” might also be manufacturing some meth up that way. If Virgil can’t solve the dog problem, dog lovers may shift to open warfare. Meanwhile, the members of the Buchanan County Consolidated School Board, fearing they’ll all go to prison, vote unanimously to kill reporter Clancy Conley, who “inadvertently discovered that the school board was stealing the school system blind.” Virgil doesn’t get much help from Sheriff Jeff Purdy, but 12-year-old McKinley Ruff and high school janitor Will Bacon provide critical assistance as panicky board members escalate the violence. Sandford is an accomplished and amusing storyteller, and he nails both the rural characters and terrain as well as he has skewered urban life in past installments. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Eric Conger’s voice is perfect for Virgil Flowers, the Bureau of Crime Apprehension agent who goes from one crime to another in rural Minnesota. Conger’s raspy baritone is evocative of the crimes that are at the heart of this police procedural as Flowers attempts to secure justice for his friends, whose dogs have gone missing. There’s a lot of dialogue, and listeners may struggle to keep the various speakers clear as Conger give the male characters little differentiation. Multiple gruff voices make it challenging to keep up with who is saying what in a complicated chain of events. M.F. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2014 - AudioFile

2014-08-28
Virgil Flowers, agreeing to check out the most minor crime imaginable in sleepy Trippton, Minnesota, finds himself in a steadily deepening pool of felonies. You may think dognapping is no big deal, but try telling that to Winky Butterfield, whose two black Labs have been carried off by D. Wayne Sharf. As Virgil's friend Johnson Johnson tells it, this latest theft is only part of a much larger pattern that's riled the dog-loving citizens of Buchanan County to demand action—if not from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, then from themselves. Eager to avoid a vigilante outbreak, Virgil (Storm Front, 2013, etc.) agrees to look for the missing pooches and promptly finds a meth lab that seems like a much bigger deal, at least to the BCA. Little does he know that a completely unrelated matter is about to nudge Trippton into wholesale violence. Members of the Buchanan County Consolidated School Board, tipped off that has-been reporter Clancy Conley is about to blow the whistle on their long-running embezzlement scheme, vote to have Conley killed and then are forced under pressure from Virgil's investigation to target ever more victims in order to cover their tracks. The school board meetings, in which cutthroat discussions of ways and means end with formal endorsements of murder that would do any parliamentarian proud, have a subversively comic edge that perfectly complements Virgil's straight-faced attempts to turn the board members against each other by urging everyone involved to rat out everyone else as they circle the wagons in ever shrinking patterns. The meth investigation winds up quickly and quietly, but Sandford keeps one last surprise up his sleeve for the denouement of the dognapping case, and it's a doozy. Exhilaratingly professional work by both Virgil and his creator that breaks no new ground but will keep the fans happy and add to their number.

Kirkus Reviews