Book: Bad Blood by John Sandford

I almost didn't stick with this book and then I couldn't put it down. Sandford knows how to tell a story. Maria and Richard recommended this author.

Lee Coakley is the sheriff in a town with three murders on her hands; she asks a state criminal investigator by the name of Virgil Flowers to help her. The plot develops and deepens and draws the reader in, or at least it did me. It is set in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa where there is a community of successful farming families who home-school their children. They have their own church services, keep to themselves and stay out of trouble. They've been in the area for a century and are prosperous, albeit somewhat stand-offish. But as the murder investigation proceeds, there are hints and suggestions of sexual abuse and impropriety involving the children in these families.

The dialogue is smooth, and the descriptions of the small towns are those anyone growing up in the Midwest would recognize and appreciate. The farm country in late fall and winter, the small town cafe, the young kids and adolescents, the reticence to get involved mixed with the curiosity of the townspeople, and the process of law investigation and enforcement are all parts of this novel.

The crimes are horrendous, and the suspense and tension builds as the story gathers momentum. The weird and skewed world of a cult is explored, giving a story like this some merit beyond pure entertainment. I will certainly check out other books by Sandford for those end-of-day times when I don't want to think too much and am ready to lose myself in a well-told tale.