Deadline by John Sanford

Deadline is number eight in John Sanford’s series featuring Virgil Flowers, an investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.  Flowers is the outdoorsy, country boy type complete with cowboy boots, Wayland Jennings length hair, and vintage rock band t-shirts.  His laid back style and folksy manner compel witnesses to open up to him.  He prefers to work alone but many times solicits help from civilians.

Virgil is invited to rural southeast Minnesota by his buddy Johnson Johnson.  Seems some dogs have gone missing in Johnson’s small Mississippi River town of Trippton and he hopes Flowers can help.  Dog napping is not a serious enough crime for Virgil’s job description but he jumps at the opportunity to do some fishing with his friend.  While looking for the dogs on a remote ridge near the river, Virgil stumbles upon a commercial meth cooking operation.  He calls another buddy of his in DEA and a raid is planned.  The morning of the raid, a local newspaper reporter is found shot to death near his run down mobile home just outside Trippton.  The reporter has a sketchy drug related past but appears to have straighten out his life and was hot after a story concerning a conspiracy to embezzle funds from the local school system.  As Virgil contemplates how to proceed, one of the suspected meth cookers who got away is found murdered… same way as the reporter.  Virgil surmises that this second murder was a diversion attempt and focuses on finding the weakest of the conspirators who are mostly school board members.  Meanwhile a local twelve year old boy leads him to a remote holding pen for the stolen dogs and plans are laid to apprehend the dog snatchers.  Flowers learns of a nearby meet scheduled for dogs to be sold for medical research.  Then the school’s security guard is found dead and school board members begin to disappear.  Heavy on suspicion, light on evidence, Virgil must quickly uncover the conspiracy before more good… or not so good… citizens are murdered.  And then there are the dogs.

Deadline is a good read complete with numerous colorful characters and a three pronged plot.  Although the plot is not always plausible (doubtful that medical research companies source dogs from poachers with the humane societies over burdened with unwanted dogs) the bigger-than-life characters carry the story for a truly fun read.  While the outcome is predictable, the adventure makes it well worth the trip to the finish.