Bloody Genius by John SandfordMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Jacket Blurb: At the local state university, two feuding departments have faced off on the battleground of PC culture. Each carries their views to extremes that may seem absurd, but highly educated people of sound mind and good intentions can reasonably disagree, right?
Then someone winds up dead, and Virgil Flowers is brought in to investigate . . . and he soon comes to realize he's dealing with people who, on this one particular issue, are functionally crazy. Among this group of wildly impassioned, diametrically opposed zealots lurks a killer, and it will be up to Virgil to sort the murderer from the mere maniacs.
Read as an audio book.
This was bloody brilliant. The story and mystery engaging, the reader is pulled along on Virgil's quest, then BAM! all the pieces slot into place and it's like, holy shit! Brilliant!
I will admit to being somewhat thrown by not knowing who the protagonist was ahead of time. Sandford's books historically reveal the murderer if not first thing, than nearly first thing, and the reader watches as Virgil (or Davenport) run around trying to figure out the crime while the reader knows everything. Not a fan of this myself, but this installment didn't do that, and I found myself waiting for the next chapter to be devoted to what the protagonist was up to. And it never happened, and, I admit, I stressed a little because "that's not how it's done".
But the ending of this one made up for everything in spades. Just...brilliant.
Except for the ending - ending. Now I'm a little nervous about the overall story arc.
Recommended if you've been reading the Virgil series.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment