Review: ‘Escape Clause’

John Sandford (aka Cedar Rapids native John Camp) has a gift. The man can write a riveting police procedural thriller with the creepiest bad guys imaginable and still manage to make me chuckle all the way through it. I only wish Sandford could produce novels at the pace of a Stuart Woods.

Let my friend Mary Sharp set up 'Escape Clause” (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $29, 392 pages), Sandford's recent Virgil Flowers novel: 'Who else could create a really excellent, long-haired cop who wears old rocker T-shirts, who hates guns and loves tacky women, country music and God? And then come up with a plot involving stealing tigers.”

She nailed the description of Flowers, a Minnesota BCA agent who's been known to tow his boat along to a crime scene or two. And this book does indeed involve the theft of two tigers from a Twin Cities zoo. The tigers were stolen by a non-licensed Minnesota doctor who wants to sell their body parts for the production of traditional Chinese medicines.

In a Xanax-induced cloud of lunacy, he starts eliminating his partners in crime and ends up being pursued by an SUV full of revenge seekers in addition to Flowers.

As if the tiger case weren't enough, Flowers also has to deal with an assault on his girlfriend back in Mankato and a subsequent assault on his girlfriend's sister.

All of this is handled with Sandford's trademark deft touch. The narrative nearly flies off the page, punctuated by witty and entertaining dialogue, razor-sharp characterizations and clever plotting that brings sigh after sigh of immense appreciation - and, of course, those plentiful laugh-out-load moments.

And the suspenseful, climactic showdown between Flowers and the whacked-out perpetrator contains a twist that is an absolute joy to behold.

Sandford's novels, this one included, contain plenty of grit and gore. They are, after all, crime novels. But all that is balanced by writing so sublime and levity so profound that he always provides a delightful literary experience. And he's done it in 26 Lucas Davenport 'Prey” novels and now nine Virgil Flowers novels.