Both Bombs and Emotions Explode in John Sandford’s “Shock Wave”

I was looking for a mystery to read at work and it’s been several years since I read a John Sandford novel. I picked up his new one with a character by the name of Virgil Flowers called “Deep Freeze”. I read it fast, and it was a solid mystery. A month or two later I was at a local church sale and I saw a few more Virgil Flowers novels there. I decided to pick up a couple of the small hardcovers all featuring him. I started with the 2011 Virgil Flowers novel “Shock Wave”. In this one, a “Wal Mart” like store called PyeMart is being opposed by a town which fears it would ruin a town of mostly small mom and pop shops. In the opening, it’s not the store that is bombed but the corporate headquarters. This sets up a series of bombs in other places throughout the book.

    Virgil Flowers is called in to investigate by his boss Lucas Devenport (of Sandford’s famed “Prey” mystery novel series) and needs to find who is planting these bombs. He goes to the small town of Mankato, surrounded by farms and highways in rural Minnesota. While there he interviews some locals, including a pharmacist, a fisherman and other quirky people. Flowers always seems to go to small towns in Minnesota to solve his cases. Poor guy. Meanwhile, his love life isn’t going great, as it never does, as his on and off again girlfriend seems to be carving a life for her and her kids in California. Even Flowers says why would someone want to come back to Minnesota after living in California? That isn’t really the focus of the book, as the focus of almost every Sandford novel is the mystery. Sandford writes very straight forward mysteries, and at times, you feel like you are watching an episode of “Law and Order” in print form, but in Minnesota instead of New York.

     All this leads Sandford is a local teacher and his wife. At first, this all seems like they are a suspect, as the local teacher is sleeping with another teacher, who is not his wife. However, like most Sandford mysteries, who seems like the suspect at first isn’t. This leads to the town board, and a chance that there was a payoff to them, which would explain why the bomb was at corporate headquarters a hundred miles away outside of the town. The trail leads him to another group of suspects at a local community college. That would make sense, because one of the professors knows how to make bombs, but there’s evidence another teacher has a garage with bomb making tools. However, they suspect those tools could have been planted. It’s a twisty story and I won’t give away who it ends up being.

    Virgil Flowers is a good character. He’s flawed, but not in a bad way. He’s been married three times, but he’s not abusive. He makes a point to say he just falls in love too easily. He believes in God. He has a boat. He’s good looking. He is in high demand for his line of work. He also is a civil service employee who takes pictures and writes magazine articles on the side. What’s not to like? He’ll probably get married again and again until something finally clicks. He’s a bit complicated, is what I’m saying, but not in a bad way. He’s also good at putting together the clues to solve a mystery. The books of Sandford are compulsively readable, and the pages just fly by. I guess the one real criticism I have of Sandford is sometimes his stories feel a little too dense in terms of being about the mystery. He has good characters, and you might want a little more depth talking about their lives.

    However, Sandford’s top goal seems to be talking about the mystery. This one isn’t a bad one. I was surprised who the villain ended up being, as he seems like a good guy throughout the book, and at the end, turns into a total bastard. However, a twist is a good sign of a good mystery. There seems to be more than Virgil Flowers than solving crimes. Sandford is a better mystery novelist than say, James Patterson or Dan Brown, which isn’t saying much but still, isn’t a bad thing either.

     Though, like Nelson DeMille’s John Corey, James Patterson’s Alex Cross and Robert B Parker’s Spencer, a key part of writing detective is they need to be somewhat likable even if they are a bit rough around the edges. The guy solving the mystery is the good guy. Flowers is likable, and I even have more books to read about him and his adventures. Also, the whole plot of bombing a big business is timely due to economic anxiety, and I like how Irving Flowers doesn’t feel a bomb in the name of either a right or left agenda is justified. Wrong is wrong. It’s a good read, but also forgettable enough you won’t spend a ton of time thinking about it after you read it, as the case with most of John Sandford’s novels. Unless, of course, you are blogging about the novel, in which case, you are thinking about it.