Another Virgil Flowers novel from John Sandford. The Flowers books are generally lighter than the Prey novels starring Virgil’s boss Lucas Davenport, but Storm Front actually veers off into farce territory. And it was OK. I enjoyed it generally, though it irritated me in places.

The story starts in Israel, where Rev. Elijah Jones of Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota (a real place) is involved in an archaeological dig. One morning he gets up early, breaks into a storage locker, steals a newly discovered artifact, steals a car, and sets off for home. Soon the Israelis are after him, and that’s where Virgil Flowers, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension officer in southern Minnesota, comes into it. He’s already happily occupied with investigating an improbably attractive redneck mother of five, whom he suspects of petty crime activity, when he’s ordered to pick up an Israeli Antiquities agent at the airport. Soon he can hardly turn around without bumping into Israeli agents, Hezbollah agents, Turkish agents, cable TV show stars, and ordinary reporters, all intent on getting credit for recovering a stone that—if genuine—could discredit the Old Testament and rock the faith of millions of Christians and Jews.

It’s mostly played for laughs, and nobody gets killed—which is a major change for a John Sandford book. People stumble over each other, pass each other ignorantly in the dark, and pass the stone back and forth—sometimes unwittingly—in something like a Keystone Kops scenario.

I suppose this is Sandford’s way of dealing with controversial material. Aside from the religious issues, there are Israelis and jihadis here. Sandford tries (and frankly it bugs me) to be evenhanded. The Hezbollah characters never get a chance to do their worst, and a ruthless Israeli agent is the real bad guy of the story. A couple of the Muslim characters, with terrorist associations, are seen to be essentially harmless and in love with western decadence. Which strikes me as wishful thinking, if it’s meant to be taken as typical.

But the book was amusing. Minor spoiler: Don’t worry about the threat to the Bible at the heart of the story. Mild violence, some sex, rough language. But, as mentioned, the violence level is pretty low, which may make this book more appealing to some than most of Sandford’s work.