I place this book in what I call my zuzu category of reading, but even a zuzu book has to have some merit form and this certainly did. Rough Country is the second novel by this author that I have read this month. I liked it (the merit) partly because of the setting which is in and north of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Several times I have stopped at a wonderful coffee shop in Grand Rapids while driving US 2 across country between Michigan and Montana because there aren't many on this route. Also, of course, much of my life has been associated with Grand Rapids, Michigan, so the name of the town alone makes me more mindful as I drive through and also as I read this story.
It's is a murder mystery, written in Sandford's easy fluent style with good characters who talk and behave as mid-Weterners do. Writing what you know about certainly rings true in this book as the author lives in Minnesota.
Last time I drove through that part of the state, I detoured northwest of Grand Rapids to the Red Lake Indian Reservation and then west from there, basically through the geography of this novel. I remember the trees and lakes and low-key vacation and tourist cabins, and the feeling of being Up North" which is a place where the seasons change in noticeable ways and wood smoke is on the air, the sky is blue and summer is green...evoking the great memories of my childhood vacations on Big Star Lake in Michigan.
There are in fact several murders, but the slightly rogue state criminal investigator, Virgil Flowers, is interrupted while on a fishing trip to investigate the shotgun death of a woman who was spending a week at a lodge and who had paddled out one evening to see an eagle nest. She was the owner of a successful advertising agency in Minneapolis with some tangles in her life but nothing that unusual. It's a good story.
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