Deep Freeze by John Sandford

Virgil Flowers, ace investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) is called from vacation to Trippton, Minnesota, a small river town south of Minneapolis.  An attractive middle-aged woman who owned the local bank has been murdered and her body has been deposited in the frozen Mississippi River.  She had hosted a high school class reunion organizational meeting the night before so several of her former classmates as well as her estranged husband and his boyfriend are prime suspects.  Virgil’s inquiries send him through the private and business life of the deceased.  As in all Sandford novels, the killer is revealed to the reader and we see the criminal's motivation and efforts to cover up the crime well before Virgil does.  The killer’s effort to cover up includes the murder of a second woman and deadly warnings directed at Virgil.

To complicate Virgil’s investigation, his boss asks him to casually attend to another matter in Trippton, this one of interest to the governor.  Apparently a small group of women in Trippton are altering Barbie dolls by installing erotic noises and selling them online.  The Mattel Corporation, a political supporter of the governor and maker of Barbie dolls wants this to stop immediately.  Virgil is ordered to assist a private detective already in Trippton to find the doll manipulators.  Virgil soon learns these women are desperate for the extra income and are protective of their co-conspirators.  While Virgil clearly sympathizes with the women, he is duty bound to stop their operation.

Flowers’ laid back investigative style is all wrong according to every crime show on TV.  He is open with information which tends to get back to the suspect but somehow always works out in Flowers’ favor… thus the universal response from those who know he’s coming, ‘That f…ing Flowers.’  Sandford’s protagonist is unorthodox but likable and effective, the perfect combination for a good investigator and the perfect character for a good read.

A History of Agnostics in AA

I’m admittedly off genre with this book, A History of Agnostics in AA by Roger C. However, the topic is of interest to me and I’ve agreed to report about what I’m reading. Although AA suggests a belief in a higher power, a “God as we understand him,” there is no doubt that the organization was founded by Christians who assumed that their god was the necessary way to healing a spiritual malady. For nonbelievers who need help with sobriety, that’s hard to swallow. So, the agnostics and “free thinkers” have been growing in numbers and importance despite some significant resistance to old school AA’ers. I found the history going back to early member Jim Burwell and Silvia K. to be fascinating. Quotes from founder Bill W were impressively supportive of this nontheistic trend. Atheistic beliefs are often perceived as threatening to alcoholic believers, and along that tune, I thought a quote from Thomas Jefferson was most interesting, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” If the topic interests you, the book is worth reading.

Mississippi Blood

Mississippi Blood is the final book of a trilogy by Greg Iles, and I’ve already reviewed the first two ones, Natchez Burning and The Bone Tree. This seventh book in the Penn Cage series and third book of the trilogy was just published this year. I raved about the first two books, and this one was equally captivating. Penn Cage is the former Houston prosecutor who moved to his hometown where he became the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. I would spoil the main plot and subplots to write much more, so please see my reviews of the first two books. His writing is the best possible combination of historical fiction and crime writing that I’ve seen. His primary theme is racism, the ugliest part of the Southern history. You’ll have to expend some energy, but you’ll derive lots of pleasure and learn a lot as you find out how the Cage family endured more tragedy in the face of hardboiled objection to any change in the racial landscape of Natchez.

No Lesser Plea

After reading and thoroughly enjoying Without Fear or Favor, the 29^th and latest book in Robert K. Tanenbaum’s Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi series, I decided to start at the beginning and gradually work my way through these novels. It just might take me a while, but the protagonists are compelling figures and the plots have been excellent. In this first book, No Lesser Plea, Tanenbaum introduces us to New York City’s Assistant District Attorney Karp and his colleague Ciampi. He wrote that in the 60’s and 70s, it was a great time to be a crook in New York, as well as a great time to be an attorney who was willing to do battle with such crooks. The primary antagonist was Mandeville Louis who rightly claimed to be the city’s most successful armed robber. But, not only was Louis a robber, but he was also a murderous psychopath. Louis’ nemesis was none other than Karp who was determined to put Louis away for the rest of his life.

Tanenbaum wrote about the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building, New York’s jail, the Manhattan House of Detention, which was more commonly referred to as “The Tombs.” But Karp had not yet hit the big time and was stuck dealing with run of the mill criminals. It was when he was transferred to the Homicide Bureau that he hit the big time, and it was then that he stumbled across a matter with Mandeville Louis. It was also the time that his relationship with Ciampi developed, a character Tanenbaum introduced as follows: “The door opened and Marlene Ciampi breezed in, in blazer, knee-length gray flannel skirt, and high boots, a Marlboro gripped between her teeth like a stogie.” She was late for a meeting and said, “I’ve had an un-fucking-believable whorehouse of a day.” Then, a bomb went off in The Tombs.

Close to my own sensitivities, Tanenbaum presented a clueless psychiatrist, Dr. Stone. “It was perfectly clear to him that criminals, especially violent ones, were mentally ill. Take such a person and place him in an environment in which everyone assumed he was mentally competent – in, say a court room – and the mental disease could not help but get worse.” The condition was known as the Ganser Syndrome, and Tanenbaum didn’t make that up. The diagnosis is part of the factitious disorders in psychiatry. Louis knew about the Ganser Syndrome and was able to convince Dr. Stone he had it. Stone had an equally clueless colleague who rubberstamped his diagnosis of Louis. But, Karp knew Louis was only gaming the system. How could he prove that?

The author surrounded his cast with a set of interesting, believable, and entertaining characters. The writing was good and the court room scenes were excellent. I’ve already downloaded book #2 of the series, Depraved Indifference, but my reading queue is very long, so I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get to it.

Order to Kill by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills

With all the pre-release publicity of the latest Mitch Rapp book (Enemy of the State), I learned I was one behind the curve. Somehow I'd missed 2016's Order to Kill. Not wanting to skip over any book in this series, I had to read this one while waiting for my name to rise up the wait list at the library.

This picks up where The Survivor left off. In an effort to keep nukes out of the hands of terrorists, the Pakistani government has been moving pieces of its arsenal around to keep any would-be thieves off guard. Problem is that the politicians and the military are routinely at odds with each other. Knowing what could happen, the US tries its best to keep tabs on the whereabouts of Pakistan's nukes.

The Russian's hadn't been active participants in the war on terror and in The Survivor, Rapp learns that Moscow might be brewing up some bizarre plans. The current Russian president is hanging by a thread because the economy sucks and a cabal of businessmen aren't pleased that their cut of the economic pie is shrinking. Oil prices have tanked because the Saudi's have flooded the market with oil driving down prices. To save his own skin, the Russian president plans to steal some of the Pakistani warheads and set off a string of dirty bombs on Saudi refineries. With no Saudi oil, Russia's reserves will be in extreme demand for decades, enriching the cabal, securing his power and legacy.

Mitch Rapp and colleagues have been tracking the Pakistani nukes, but he has to run on an emergent assignment in South Africa to save a friend (from The Survivor). While successful, Rapp comes to realize it was all a ruse to get him off the Pakistani nuke assignment for a time. When he returns, his team ends up in a firefight at a warehouse where one of the nukes was being temporarily stored.  During the firefight, one of Rapp's most trusted warriors is bested by an adversary who was definitely not from Pakistan.

The hunt now takes on two dimensions. Where are the nukes (six are now missing) and who is that non-Muslim? It's a safe guess that the Russian who is overseeing the assignment won't want to hang on to the nukes for too long so the hunt on both fronts ramps up into high gear via both sigint and humint sources. Rapp has to infiltrate ISIS and the CIA has to delicately induce the Saudi's that they are under a real threat and that it's in their best interest to help in the takedown.

As with all Flynn/Rapp books, Rapp is the lethal bull in a china closet. Fail to give him the answer he wants will likely lead to a bullet in the forehead. Odds and logic are not in Rapp's wheelhouse. It's his way or the highway. Some may be disappointed in the ending. But I see it as just another way to continue characters across successive books. I'm on the wait list at the library for Enemy of the State so I shouldn't have to wait long to see which characters surface.

ECD

The Western Star by Craig Johnson

#13 in the wildly popular Walt Longmire series.

Walt is headed for Cheyenne, WY to appear at a parole hearing for a murderer he put away back when he was a rookie Deputy Sheriff in the mid-late 1970s. Every five years Kim Wheeler comes up for parole and Walt does his best to make sure Wheeler stays put. You see, in Longmire’s mind, ‘Life Without Parole’ means the inmate is to stay in prison until the inmate dies – behind bars. But the governor’s wife thinks that the prison system should be looking for ways to reduce the inmate population and when an inmate qualifies for a ‘compassionate parole’ for any number of reason, the inmate should be released. In this case, doctors say that Wheeler has pancreatic cancer and likely may not even survive to the date of the hearing. Longmire is having none of that nonsense. Wheeler should die behind bars.

Back in the mid-late 1970s, Longmire was months from being a Marine cop stationed in Vietnam. He and Martha had just gotten married and she was pregnant. But Martha was having 2^nd thoughts about being the wife of a Sheriff.

Walt had been on the job for two weeks working under what would become his mentor, Sheriff Lucian Connolly of Absaroka County. Lucian dragged his new Deputy along on a political/social gathering of Wyoming sheriffs. Every couple of years, the sheriff from each of Wyoming’s 24 counties gather in Cheyenne to partake in a ritual. They board a private train pulled by one of the last of the old steam locomotives – The Western Star. They ride across the state and back; couple days, couple nights.

Most of the sheriffs come stag, but it’s OK to bring a wife or girlfriend, as the case may be. Longmire was just hoping he was still married when this junket was over. Steaks are eaten and copious amounts of alcohol are consumed. Lies are told and stories get exaggerated.

The train stops for water. Most of the sheriffs hop off the train to stretch their legs or have a smoke. Being the rookie, Longmire allows the established sheriffs to re-board ahead of him, then he gets hammered from behind, dragged into the shadows, and the train takes off. While Longmire is trying to flag a ride to the next stop, one sheriff is killed and another disappears. Longmire snags a ride with a touring rock band and catches up with the train. Seeing as how he wasn’t around, he’s now a suspect.

In this wild west version of Murder on the Orient Express, Walt plays the role of Hercule Poirot trying to sleuth out who is behind the murders.

But Craig Johnson goes a step beyond the original Agatha Christie novel. Johnson weaves these two tales together between the current day and the 1970s, expertly flipping back and forth between the two different cases. In doing so, we learn a whole lot of Walt’s backstory of when he first started working as a sheriff. To say much more would ruin your incredibly fun ride. The book is proof positive that Johnson is supremely comfortable with his craft and the characters he has created. And the best part of the Longmire series is the ease in which we see the story played out in our head because the casting of each character in the NetFlix series (6^th and final season coming up in short order) is so perfect that they populate your head bringing every page to life.

What I will say is this:

Damn you Craig Johnson.

You better not make us wait a full year before we see how this story plays out. The ending of both the backstory and the current day are too abrupt. Get back to typing and get #14 out pronto.

ECD