"Bloody Brilliant" Is A Solid Enough Sandford Mystery

 

John Sandford is known for his thrillers and mysteries, and has been writing the same characters since “Rules of Prey” in 1989, introducing his best known character, Lucas Devenport. In his universe of detective running around Minnesota, however in 2007, he gave a series to a supporting character who sometimes worked with Devenport to solve his cases, Virgil Flowers. These have also spawned a successful series of mystery novels. In his 12^th novel featuring Flowers, “Bloody Brilliant”, Flowers is called to investigate the murder of a professor and surgeon at the University of Minnesota named Barthelemy Quill. The novel opens in the usual Sandford style. Quill is being imitate with a woman in the University library after hours, when a mysterious figure hits him on the head with a heavy laptop, causing his death.

Flowers finds that Quill had made many enemies during his life as a professor and surgeon at the University. A wealthy man, he has several ex wives, a college aged daughter he hardly speaks to, and a professor from the Department of Cultural Science he was caught on camera arguing with during a lecture. Flowers, along with some other local detectives, interviews a bunch of these suspects. Like your usual Sandford novel, the novel focuses mostly on interviewing people and Flowers running around Sandford’s usual setting of Minnesota.

One of the things that Sandford does well is set up many leads. At different points in the novel, Flowers suspects that Quill’s computer had a file that was stolen by a corporate spy, and at another point in the novel, he suspects it has to do with a messy operation at the University hospital that had to do with a man who has a spaniel injury. All of these are solid leads, and then add on top a angsty college aged daughter, an prostitute Quill was sleeping with, drugs found in his house and the generally prickly politically correct environment of academia that Quill didn’t like very much, and you have a lot going on.

Sandford uses the fictional Department of Cultural Science to poke fun at politically correct culture on college campuses. The professor that Quill fought with during her lecture is a woman who sees everything as male privilege. When Flowers clearly just wants information for the case, she keeps suggesting studies she could use to look into a culture problem. All in all, she’s pretentious. She, though, does come off hypocritical as some points, when one of her older grad students says he felt she was flirting with him, despite being close in age.

Sandford doesn’t spend too much time on Flower’s personal life, though the little glimpses of it are nice. Flowers dotes on his now pregnant girlfriend, is considering writing a novel to add to his side career freelance writing magazine articles and even has a barbecue with his friend, Lucas Devenport, his wife and kids. All of this is pleasant enough, and connects the universe of detectives Sandford has created.

The copy I had of this novel lists it as a “Virgil Flowers Thriller” on the cover, but this one came off more as a old fashioned mystery novel. There’s not a ton of action in this one, as most of it is just Flowers interviewing possible suspects and trying to put together the pieces. The real action doesn’t happen until the last few chapters with a big car chase.

The usual things that happen in a Sandford novel happen like Flowers meeting sketchy characters, and other cops and detectives who all pretty colorful types. Sandford, to me, is a writer like James Patterson, Lee Child and Robert B. Parker. However I should add John Sandford is better at the twists and turns than James Patterson is, who tends to throw a twist into his novels without a proper set up.

Jack Reacher Is In Too Deep in "In Too Deep"

 

Jack Reacher goes through a standard mystery in “In Too Deep”. In fact, one can say, once again, Jack Reacher is in too deep. Reacher wakes up chained to a makeshift bed, not knowing how he got there. It’s a standard start to a Jack Reacher novel. Reacher is always stuck somewhere, sometimes knowing how he got there and sometimes not. This time, a guy named Vidic is standing there, and tells him to stay there, and that he’ll help. Right away Reacher doesn’t trust him. Vidic has a small group of sketchy people with him, in an abandoned house, who seem to have millions of dollars worth of random antiques. Of course, this all seems fishy to Jack Reacher. Add into the fact that the FBI seems to be onto him, and an agent seems to want to want revenge on one of the members of Vidic’s crew for killing her father. Of course, this is a female agent, and she automatically takes an attraction to Reacher. Pretty standard stuff for a Reacher novel. Reacher decides to help her out, while pretending to be also on this sketchy crew’s side to crack their operation wide open.

The novel is pretty normal for a Reacher novel, while in usual Lee Child style, a step above the usual writing of a thriller novel proses wise. There’s a lot of description, if a bit too much showing instead of telling. However, Lee Child (or in this case, his brother, Andrew Child who has taken over the series), seems to write his usual descriptive and wordy writing, that moves the story along but doesn’t skim on the details. Reacher chapters are proper length, unlike the two-page chapters of James Patterson, and aren’t bogged down by tons of dialogue, like the later novels of Robert B. Parker.

However, Reacher is still Reacher, even with a new author. He still has creative ways to set up bad guys, and play both sides, and get both sides to trust him until the bad side doesn’t anymore. Ever since I started watching the Jack Reacher TV series on Amazon, the voice of Reacher on the page sounds like Alan Ritcher, the actor who plays him. That straight to the point voice.

The story takes an international crisis turns as Reacher puts together the pieces, which include a report that could pose danger to the United States as a whole. These turn out to not be the small-time crooks they appear to be at the beginning of the novel. It’s a solid Reacher thriller, and a page turning mystery. Sometimes the characters put together the pieces to the reader and sometimes the reader turns to put it together with the character. Jack Reacher is so good at putting together the pieces that the reader tends to follow Reacher as he puts it all together. This isn’t the best Jack Reacher novel ever, but it’s a solid read. I look forward to the next adventure.

Get To The Point: Great Short Story Collections To Read

 If you’re not in the mood for a novel, you can always read a short story collection. Short story collections are perfect if you want to skip around a book or be done with a story faster. So, what kind of short story collections should you read? There are short story collections of multiple genres and types. There are even novella collections, where the stories are slightly longer than your typical short stories but are also shorter than your typical novels. Here are some books worth checking out.

“Different Seasons” by Stephen King – A collection by Stephen King, this book is close to perfect, as in every story in this collection is gold. Even two iconic movies, The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, have come out of this collection. “The Shawshank Redemption” is based on the story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and “Stand by Me” is based on the story “The Body”. Both stories are well worth reading, with “The Body” being one of my personal favorite Stephen King stories. Another story in the collection, also made into a film, is “Apt Pupil”, which unlike “The Body” and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” isn’t heartwarming but instead terrifying, but in a more realistic way than supernatural way you often find in a Stephen King story, as a kid becomes obsessed with his Nazi neighbor.

“Get In Trouble” by Kelly Link – Kelly Link is the only fantasy writer to be a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and this is the book that was up for it. While known mainly as a fantasy editor, she started to publish short story collections in 2005 with her book, “Magic for Beginners.” Link’s writing style varies from story to story, but she often dives into not just the supernatural but the unusual as well. Some of the stories in this book include “The Summer People” about mysterious neighbors, “Secret Identity” which bends the supernatural and mundane, and “Origin Story” about a trip to a Wizard of Oz themed amusement park and many other oddities. Link is a very good writer.

“I Robot” By Issac Asimov – “I Robot” is the classic short story collection by science fiction author Issac Asimov, and though it’s sometimes labelled as a novel, it’s really a short story collection. Asimov is one of the best science fiction writers of all time, and this is a collection of short stories with a simple theme: robots. Asimov was known for his robot novels and would go on to write 37 books about this theme. However, “I Robot” is where this all starts. The stories are woven together by a women named Susan, who is telling the stories to a reporter who is writing about the robotics company she works for. Each story explores the ethics of and the relationships robots have with humans. It is arguably Asimov’s most famous book, and worth a read.

“The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” by Sherman Alexie – Sherman Alexie is the great modern storyteller of native American culture, and in this 1993 short story collection, he continues being this. What makes this collection interesting is many of the stories in this collection are about the same character, Victor. In one story, Victor looks back on his childhood on the Native American reservation, in another story, he collects his father’s ashes, and still another story, Victor attends a carnival with his friends, leading him to reflect on conforming to the white man’s identity. There are also other stories in this collection, including a women reflecting on her son’s birth, a narration of a women raising her son year by year, and other stories. Sherman Alexie is a funny and sensitive writer, and well worth checking out.

So, these are some short story collections worth checking out. Oddly when I was writing this article, I was trying to remember the short story collection I read “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, but on further research, I realize that this piece was published in a magazine back in the 1980s.  I had to read this for a college course, but I remember it being a great short story, so I recommend seeking this one out on the internet, as well as it’s well-done movie adaptation “Smooth Talk”. These books should get you started on the artform of shorter fiction. Despite not having a book on this list, I also recommend seeking out any short story you can by Ray Bradberry, Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain.