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This page lists books that feature the police detective Virgil Flowers.

Dark of the Moon

John Sandford

2007

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"Virgil Flowers — tall, lean, late thirties, three times divorced, hair way too long for a cop's — had kicked around a while before joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. First it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport had brought him into the BCA, promising him, We'll only give you the hard stuff. He'd been doing the hard stuff for three years now — but never anything like this. In the small town of Bluestem, where everybody knows everybody, a house way up on a ridge explodes into flames, its owner, a man named Judd, trapped inside. There is a lot of reason to hate him, Flowers discovers. Years ago, Judd had perpetrated a scam that'd driven a lot of local farmers out of business, even to suicide. There are also rumors swirling around: of some very dicey activities with other men's wives; of involvement with some nutcase religious guy; of an out-of-wedlock daughter. In fact, Flowers concludes, you'd probably have to dig around to find a person who didn't despise him. And that wasn't even the reason Flowers had come to Bluestem."

Heat Lightning

John Sandford

2008

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"Homicide Detective Virgil Flowers doesn't think much can surprise him anymore. He's wrong. It's a hot, humid summer night in Minnesota, and Flowers is in bed with one of his ex-wives when the phone rings. It's Lucas Davenport. There's a body in Stillwater, two shots to the head, found near a veterans' memorial. And the victim has a lemon in his mouth. Exactly like the body they found last week. The more Flowers works the murders, the more convinced he is that someone's keeping a list - and that list could have a lot more names on it. If he could only find out what connects them all ... But when he does start to piece the clues together, he discovers that this case leads down a lot more trails than he thought it did - and every one of them is booby-trapped."

Rough Country

John Sandford

2009

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, Flowers gets a call asking him to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only: a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic surgery and commune with nature. And the more Flowers digs, the more he discovers it to be a hotbed of jealousy, blackmail, greed, anger and fear. Then he discovers that this is not the first murder, that there was a second, seemingly unrelated killing the year before. And that there's about to be a third, definitely related one, any time now. And as for the fourth ... well, Virgil had better hope he can catch the killer before that happens. Because it could be his own."

Bad Blood

John Sandford

2010

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"One late fall Sunday in southern Minnesota, a farmer brings a load of soybeans to a local grain elevator- and a young man hits him on the head with a steel bar, drops him into the grain bin, waits until he's sure he's dead, and then calls the sheriff to report the "accident." Suspicious, the sheriff calls in Virgil Flowers, who quickly breaks the kid down...and the next day the boy's found hanging in his cell. Remorse? Virgil isn't so sure, and as he investigates he begins to uncover a multigeneration, multifamily conspiracy-a series of crimes of such monstrosity that, though he's seen an awful lot in his life, even he has difficulty in comprehending it...and in figuring out what to do next."

Shock Wave

John Sandford

2011

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"The superstore chain PyeMart has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two very angry groups want to stop it: local merchants, fearing for their businesses, and environmentalists, predicting ecological disaster. The protests don't seem to be slowing the project, though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands.The first bomb goes off on the top floor of PyeMart's headquarters. The second one explodes at the construction site itself. The blasts are meant to inflict maximum damage-and they do. Who's behind the bombs, and how far will they go? It's Virgil Flowers's job to find out... before more people get killed."

Mad River

John Sandford

2012

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"Bonnie and Clyde, they thought. And what's-his-name, the sidekick. Three teenagers with dead-end lives, and chips on their shoulders, and guns. The first person they killed was a highway patrolman. The second was a woman during a robbery. Then, hell, why not keep on going? As their crime spree cuts a swathe through rural Minnesota, some of it captured on the killers' cell phones and sent to a local television station, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers joins the growing army of cops trying to run them down. But even he doesn't realize what's about to happen next."

Storm Front

John Sandford

2013

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"In Israel, a man clutching a backpack searches desperately for a boat. In Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a message from Lucas Davenport: You're about to get a visitor. It's an Israeli cop, and she's tailing a man who's smuggled out an extraordinary relic-a copper scroll revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon. Wait a minute, laughs Virgil. Is this one of those Da Vinci Code deals? The secret scroll, the blockbuster revelation, the teams of murderous bad guys? Should I be boning up on my Bible verses? He looks at the cop. She's not laughing. As it turns out, there are very bad men chasing the relic, and they don't care who's in the way or what they have to do to get it. Maybe Virgil should start praying."

Deadline

John Sandford

2014

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"In southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to an end. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. "Issues" is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether to authorize the killing of a local reporter. There are no votes against. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is helping out a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be turning into something much bigger and uglier - a team of dognappers supplying medical labs - when he gets a call from Lucas Davenport. A murdered body has been found - and the victim is a local reporter."

Escape Clause

John Sandford

2016

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. Two large, and very rare, Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they’ve been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others – as Virgil is about to find out. Then there’s the homefront. Virgil’s relationship with his girlfriend Frankie has been getting kind of serious, but when Frankie’s sister moves in for the summer, the situation gets a lot more complicated."

Deep Freeze

John Sandford

2017

A Virgil Flowers novel.

"Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt – and as it turned out, homicidal – local school board, and now the town’s back in view with more alarming news: A woman’s been found dead, frozen in a block of ice. There’s a possibility that it might be connected to a high school class of twenty years ago that has a mid-winter reunion coming up, and so, wrapping his coat a little tighter, Virgil begins to dig into twenty years’ worth of traumas, feuds, and bad blood. In the process, one thing becomes increasingly clear to him. It’s true what they say: High school is murder."