Sunday, January 12, 2014

Book: Storm Front by John Sandford

His latest. He lives in New Mexico????

Fun to read, although it seemed more simplistic than most of Sandford's novels, and the premise seemed a stretch: A dying professor / minister working on a dig in Israel discovers a stele. He steals it and quickly and surreptitiously gets it back to the US, whereupon several good and bad guys want it: the Mossad, the Israel Antiquities Authority, a rich Texan, a TV personality, shadowy guys from the Mideast, Hezbollah, a Lebanese student….and, of course, Virgil. Sandford makes it all work somehow with his usual minor deviations from the main story such as the dalliance between Virgil and a local woman whom he is investigating for selling fraudulently "aged" lumber but who then also gets involved with the stele.

It's a Virgil Flowers novel. I continue to think Sandford writes satisfying and entertaining and even (usually) credible novels. He is, by far, my favorite author of police / crime stories…way ahead of Burke or Hiaasen or Cornwell. I do my best to get my friends to read him (but with the testosterone factor warning…)

Most of the action takes place in Minnesota, which is another of the reasons I like reading Sandford. The upper midwest is familiar and recognizable. It's fun to read about my "neighbors."




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