Holy ghost

Review by New York Times Review

AS FAR AS I'm concerned, Joe Ide can't write them fast enough. His unorthodox hero, Isaiah (IQ) Quintabe, happily met again in WRECKED (Mulholland, $27), is a brainy private eye from Los Angeles who helps his neighbors deal with the usual neighborhood problems: "store thefts, break-ins, lost children, wife-beaters, bullies and con men." For his services, he's usually paid in casseroles, cookies and home repairs; Louella Barnes even settled her bill by knitting him a reindeer sweater. But that sort of trade-off looks to change when a painter named Grace Monarova walks into his life, along with the prospect of bona fide, negotiable cash in order to find her mother. But the money seems less important than what else might be on offer: the sort of serious love interest that was missing from his first two cases. Unfortunately, like IQ's deadbeat clients, Grace tries to barter, paying him with his choice of a painting - although the poor guy is so smitten, he might have settled for a peanut butter sandwich. Despite being lovestruck, IQ is professional enough to realize that Grace isn't telling him everything, which makes the investigation a lot harder than it needs to be. Just the same, he's floored when a simple missing persons case leads to a vengeance drama involving an electric cattle prod with enough volts "to knock a steer sideways" and a savage beating that has him hanging tough but eventually screaming for mercy. "The only thing holding him together was the thought of the crew working on Grace. Beating her, assaulting her, breaking her fingers, breaking her art." A prologue featuring a group of former guards from the American military prison at Abu Ghraib (where they received "no instructions, regulations, limits, guidelines or supervision") provides a harrowing back story that explains why IQ is so hard-boiled. His innate sweetness in the face of such mad-dog cruelty is more of a mystery, one we'll look forward to puzzling out in his next adventure. John sandford's madly entertaining Virgil Flowers mysteries are more fun than a greased-pigwrestling contest. The plots are outlandish; the characters peculiar; and the best bits of dialogue are largely unprintable. So it is with HOLY GHOST (Putnam, $29), which is set in Wheatfield, Minn., a worn-out town of 650 weary souls who elected Wardell Holland mayor on the basis of his pitifully honest campaign slogan: "I'll Do What I Can." But nothing less than a miracle could put this hamlet back on its feet. Happily, a miracle is exactly what it gets when apparitions of the Blessed Virgin at St. Mary's Catholic Church bring in hordes of coinjingling believers to patronize the local stores, including the mayor's own establishment, "Skinner & Holland, Eats & Souvenirs." But just when commerce begins to perk up, a sniper starts taking random potshots at visitors and residents alike. This is a situation that calls for Virgil Flowers, an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who brings a fresh eye and a keen sense of humor to the case. Although his formal investigation largely has to do with tracing ballistics, Virgil makes time to take in the sights, teach a lesson to a vicious bully and sample the terrible cooking at Mom's Cafe. IT'S always cold, damp and foggy in Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries featuring William Monk, commander of the Thames River Police. The atmosphere is exceptionally murky in DARK TIDE RISING (Baliantine, $28), which opens with a kidnapping that leads to a savage murder on Jacob's Island. "This place is like death," observes a visitor to this floating charnel house, where rotting houses are slowly sinking into a "thick, viscous mud that sucked anything of weight into itself, like quicksand." Perry makes cunning work of the plot, which raises issues of trust and loyalty while driving home a grim message about the vulnerability of women who entrust their fortunes to unscrupulous men. But it's the river that dominates the book, a mysterious presence "full of powerful currents, bending back on each other as they found obstacles, filthy, strongly tidal and ... cold enough to rob you of breath." after 240 days without rain and crops devastated by "grasshoppers as big as prairie dogs," the farming community of Jackson, Okla., is ready to pin its hopes on a rainmaker. But in Laurie Loewenstein's Depression-era mystery, DEATH OF A RAINMAKER (Kaylie Jones/Akashic, paper, $16.95), that effort ends when the man is murdered. Sheriff Temple Jennings would rather look into this crime than perform his more onerous duties, like foreclosing on Jess and Hazel Fuller's farm. The murder investigation allows Loewenstein to probe into the lives of proud people who would never expose their troubles to strangers. People like John Hodge, the town's most respected lawyer, who knocks his wife around, and kindhearted Etha Jennings, who surreptitiously delivers home-cooked meals to the hobo camp outside town because one of the young Civilian Conservation Corps workers reminds her of her dead son. Loewenstein's sensitive treatment of these dark days in the Dust Bowl era offers little humor but a whole lot of compassion. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The prolific Sandford has produced 28 Lucas Davenport thrillers since 1989, many of which were best-sellers, as well as the Virgil Flowers novels, of which this is the eleventh (after Deep Freeze, 2017). And, holy smoke, Holy Ghost is a hot one! Something is cooking in Pinion, Minnesota. Not just the bad cheeseburgers and fries at Mom's Cafe, the only restaurant in the small town of 700 souls, or the sad chicken pot pies available at Skinner & Holland Eats and Souvenirs. But what is really on fire is the town's once-crumbling economy. A floating apparition of the Virgin Mary has appeared in the local Catholic church, attracting thousands of pilgrims. When the miracle is eclipsed by random sniper shootings and murders, Flowers is at wit's end trying to figure out what's going on. He gets lots of help from his usual posse, as well as some of the locals, who are so well described that the reader could easily pick them out of a lineup. The dialogue is sometimes biting and always witty, and the entire book is at once wicked and sublime. This would be perfect for fans anxiously awaiting the next Carl Hiaasen. They will be delighted to learn the distinctions between Cheeto and Cheez-It residues. But no palm trees; just lots of good corn acreage. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Sandford is a bona fide A-lister, and every new novel, whether starring Lucas Davenport or Virgil Flowers, is sure to generate public-library demand.--Jane Murphy Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In bestseller Sandford's wickedly enjoyable 11th outing for Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers (after 2017's Deep Freeze), Wardell Holland, the maverick mayor of Wheatfield (pop. 650), and his 17-year-old sidekick, John Jacob Skinner, decide the town needs an economic boost, so they contrive for the Virgin Mary to appear at St. Mary's Catholic Church, with one of Skinner's many sexual conquests, Jennie Fischer, in the Mary role. The Marian Apparition succeeds in bringing flocks of tourists to Wheatfield. Then sniper-like shootings that wound two citizens threaten the bonanza. Flowers's subsequent investigation turns up suspects ranging from a few would-be Nazis to a farmer/gun range owner and Jennie's porn-loving boyfriend. When the shootings turn deadly, Flowers gets help, which he badly needs as he comes to realize that he must outwit a clever killer who proves one of his maxims: "If it's criminal, it's either stupid or crazy." Sandford's trademark sly humor shines throughout. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Wendall Holland, the mayor of Wheatfield, MN, a dying small town of about 650, and his street-smart 17-year-old friend Skinner have a brilliant idea. If the Virgin Mary appears at the local Catholic Church, it will draw crowds and money to the area. The scheme works exquisitely until a tourist is shot by a sniper. After the second shooting, the mayor calls the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Virgil Flowers is assigned the case. Virgil assumes he can easily apprehend the sniper, but that's not the case in a small community where everyone has a gun. Then a local resident is targeted and Virgil finds a body. This fast-paced novel never lets up, in violence, police investigation, or wisecracks from Virgil and his fellow officers. The suspense will draw in readers initially, but the well-developed characters, especially Holland and Skinner, along with the irreverent agents and officers, will keep readers hanging on for the dark humor and banter. VERDICT Sandford follows the nonstop action of Deep Freeze with another satisfying case for the likable Flowers. [See Prepub Alert, 4/23/18.]-Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A drolly fraudulent plan to reverse the fortunes of a declining Minnesota town hits a snag in the form of a much more serious spate of felonies.Wheatfield mayor Wardell Holland, who lost a foot in Afghanistan, sees no reason why he shouldn't take intellectually and sexually precocious teenager John Jacob Skinner's advice about having Janet Fischer, Skinner's frequent bedmate, masquerade as the Blessed Virgin at St. Mary's Catholic Church. The apparently miraculous sightings of the faithful will put Wheatfield back on the map, increase tourism, and juice the local economy, all without hurting a soul. But then a series of shootings outside the church indicate that although souls may be getting saved, bodies are having a tougher time. Iowa visitor Harvey Coates isn't seriously injured, but Betty Rice, a second visitor, is wounded seriously enough to warrant a call to Virgil Flowers, of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (Deep Freeze, 2017, etc.). Leaving his pregnant girlfriend, Frankie Nobles, back in Mankato, Virgil drives the hour to Wheatfield and findsnothing: no obvious suspects, no motive, no forensic evidence, not even a good place to get lunch. Looking for clues about the likely weapon, he stumbles on the rotting corpse of Glen Andorra, a farmer whose shooting range drew many local marksmen, and the mystery darkens. Andorra was almost certainly killed by someone who wanted the use of his .223 rifle for some long-distance target practice, but who and why? When the shooter scores a fatal shot on retired health care aide Marge Osborne, Virgil, immediately assuming she's been the real target from the beginning, narrows his focus, still to no avail. Why would anyone kill such an inoffensive old lady? It must be all about moneybut where's the money?It would be nice if the payoff were more closely linked to the amusing setup, but the detection, though often tediously routine, carries all the authenticity you'd expect from a pro like Sandford. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One               Wardell Holland, the mayor of Wheatfield, Minnesota, was sitting in the doublewide he rented from his mother, a Daisy match-grade pellet rifle in his hands, shooting flies. His mother suspected he let the flies in on purpose, so he could shoot at them. He denied it, but he was lying.             He was tracking a bull-sized bluebottle when the doorbell croaked. Like most other things in the place, there was something not quite right with the doorbell, but not quite wrong enough to fix. In this case, the doorbell probably indicated that the beer had arrived. The kid had taken his own sweet time about it; school had been out for an hour.             "Come in," he shouted.             The fly tracked out of the bedroom and lazily circled through the living room and toward the kitchen. He picked it up over the sights and the kid outside yelled, "Don't go shooting--"             POP! A clear miss. The fly juked as the pellet whipped past, then circled around the sink and out of sight. The pellet ricocheted once and stuck in the fiberboard closet door by the entrance.             "Hey! Hey! You crazy fuckin' pillhead, you're gonna put my eye out."             Holland shouted, "He's gone, you can come in."             John Jacob Skinner edged through the door, keeping an eye on Holland, who was sprawled on the couch, his prosthetic foot propped up on the arm, the rifle lying across his stomach. Skinner, who was seventeen, said, "Goddamnit, Wardell..."             "I won't shoot, even if I see him... though he is a trophy-sized beast."             Skinner eased into the room, carrying a six-pack of Coors Light. "You want one now or you want it in the refrigerator? They're cold."             "Now, of course. I shoot better with a little alcohol in me."             "Right." Skinner pulled loose two cans, tossed one to Holland, put four in the refrigerator, popped the top on the last one, and took a drink.             Skinner resembled his name: he was six-foot-three, skinny, with long red hair that never seemed overly clean, a razor-thin face, prominent Adam's apple, and bony shoulders and hips. He had about a billion freckles.             He'd shown a minor talent for basketball in junior high, but had quit the game when he'd went to high school. He'd told friends that he needed non-school time to think, since it was impossible to think when he was actually in school.             The coach had asked, "Now what in the Sam Hill do you want to think for, Skinner? Where's that gonna get you?"             He didn't know the answer to that question, but he did know that being the second man on the lowest level, 1-A Border Conference would get him nowhere at all. He'd thought at least that far.             "One of these days," Skinner said to Holland, "You're gonna catch a ricochet in the dick. Then what? Army gonna give you a wooden cock?"             "Shut up," Holland said.               Holland had been elected mayor as a gag played by the voters of Wheatfield on the town's stuffed shirts. What made it even funnier was that after an unsuccessful first term, Holland was re-elected in a landslide. He'd run for office on a variety of slogans his minions had spray-painted on walls around town: "No more bullshit: we're fucked," "Beer Sales on Sunday," "I'll do what I can."             All of which outshone his opponent's "A Bright Future for Wheatfield," and "Happy Days Are Here Again."             This, in a town whose population had fallen from 829 in 2000 to 721 in the last census and now probably hovered around 650, leaving behind twenty or thirty empty houses and a bunch of empty apartments over the downtown stores. Half the stores were themselves shuttered and some had been simply abandoned by their owners, eventually and pointlessly taken by the county for lack of property tax payments.             This, in a town where, fifteen years earlier, the city council had purchased from the then-mayor, in a corrupt deal, a forty-acre tract on the edge of town. The town had run water and an electric cable out to it and advertised it on a lonely I-90 billboard as the Wheatfield Industrial Park. In fifteen years, it had not attracted a single business, and, in the estimation of voters, never would.             Therefore, Holland.             Holland, a former first lieutenant in the Army, had lost a foot in Afghanistan and lived on a military disability pension, which, in Wheatfield, was good enough. He'd refused the thirty-dollar-per-meeting mayor's salary and had rented out the industrial park to a local corn farmer, so the forty acres was finally producing a bit of money. Sixty-eight hundred dollars a year, to be exact.             When he was feeling industrious, Holland would limp around town with a weed-whacker, trimming weeds and brush from around stop signs, fire hydrants, and drainage ditches. Once a month or so, he'd run the town's riding lawn mower around the local park and Little League ball field, which was more than any other mayor had done. None of that took too long in a metropolis of 650 souls.             Skinner asked Holland, "Remember how you said you were gonna do what you can, for the town? When you were elected?"             "I was deeply sincere," Holland said, insincerely.             "I know."             Skinner dragged a chair around from the breakfast bar, straddled it backwards, facing Holland on the couch, and said, "I was walking by the Catholic Church last night."             "Good," Holland said. And, "Why don't you open the door and let a couple more flies in? I'm running out of game and that big bastard's hiding."             "There was some Mexicans coming out of the church," Skinner continued. "They're meeting there on Wednesday nights. Praying and shit."             "I knew that," Holland said. He was distracted, as the bull bluebottle hove into view. He lifted the rifle.             Skinner said, "Honest to God, Holland, you shoot that rifle, I'm gonna take this fuckin' can of beer and I'm gonna sink it in your fuckin' forehead. Put that rifle down and listen to what I'm saying."             The fly reversed itself and disappeared and Holland took the rifle down. "You were walking by the Catholic Church..."             The church had been all but abandoned by the archdiocese. Not enough Catholics to keep it going and not enough local hippies to buy it as a dance studio or enough prostitutes to buy it as a massage parlor. There was a packing plant forty miles down the Interstate, though, with lots of Mexican workers, and the housing was cheap enough in Wheatfield that it had lately attracted two dozen of the larger Mexican families.             The diocese had given a key to the church to a representative of the Wheatfield Mexicans, who were doing a bit to maintain it and to pay the liability insurance. Every once in a while, a Spanish-speaking priest from Minneapolis would drop by to say a Mass.             Skinner: "I got to thinking..."             "Man, that always makes me nervous," Holland said. "Know what I'm saying?"             "What I thought of was, how to make Wheatfield the busiest town on the prairie. Big money for everybody. For a long time. We could get a cut ourselves, if we could buy out Henry Morganstat. Could we get a mortgage, you think?"             Holland sighed. "I got no idea how a seventeen-year-old high school kid could be so full of shit as you are. A hundred and sixty pounds of shit in a twelve-pound bag. So tell me, then finish your beer, and go away, and leave me with my fly."             Skinner told him.               Holland had nothing to say for a long time. He stared across the space between them and finally said, "Jesus Christ, that could work, J.J. You say it'd cost six hundred dollars? I mean, I got six hundred dollars. I'd have to look some stuff up on the Internet. And that thing about buying out Henry... I think he'd take twenty grand for the place. I got the GI Bill and my mother would probably loan me enough for the rest, at nine percent, the miserable bitch, but... Jesus Christ."             "I'd want a piece of the action," Skinner said.             "Well, of course. You came up with the idea, I'll come up with the money. We go fifty-fifty," Holland said.             "That's good. I'd hate to get everything in place and then have to blackmail you for a share," Skinner said.             Holland's eyes narrowed: "We gotta talk to some guys..."             Skinner said, "We can't talk to any guys. This is you and me... If we..." He realized that Holland's eyes were tracking past him and he turned and saw the fly headed back to the kitchen. "Goddamnit, Holland, look at me. We're talking about saving the town, here. Making big money, too."             Holland said, "We'll have to tell at least one more person. We need a woman."             Skinner scratched his nose. "Yeah. I thought of that. There's Jennie. She can keep her mouth shut."             "You still nailin' her?"             "From time to time, yeah, when Larry isn't around."             "You know, you're gonna knock her up sooner or later," Holland said. "She's ripe as a plum and I'd guess her baby clock is about to go off. What is she, anyway, thirty-three? When that red-haired bun pops outa the oven, you best be on a Greyhound to Hawaii."             "Yeah, yeah, maybe, but she'd do this, and she'd be perfect. Who else would we get, anyway?"             "I dunno, I..."             The fly tracked around the room again and Holland said, "Shhhh... he's gonna land." He lifted the rifle and pointed it over Skinner's shoulder toward the sink. Skinner lurched forward onto the floor to get down and out of the way, as Holland pulled the trigger.             The fly disappeared in a puff of fly guts and broken wings.             Holland looked down at Skinner and whispered, "Got him. It's like... it's like some kinda sign." Excerpted from Holy Ghost by John Sandford All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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