The second of the Trask Brothers murder mysteries, set in Minnesota, is Clean Kill. The first book centered more on David Trask, sheriff of Lake County in northern MN. This time we spend a bit more time with his twin brother Don, a big shot with the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

A band on tour borrows a tour bus, only to notice a foul smell coming from one of the luggage compartments. Inside they find a ripe corpse, which has – oddly – been cleaned with bleach, and had its finger- and toenails removed. Soon similar bodies, all of drug addicts, start showing up around Two Harbors, where David lives, and so the cop brothers will have to join forces. Meanwhile, Don is growing curious about a prominent, highly connected man who seems to be connected to all this, and his bosses are telling him to back off. Which only makes him more suspicious.

Since John Sandford has taken Lucas Davenport national, there seems to be an opening for a new fictional Minnesota super-cop. Or cops. I’m not sure the Trask brothers quite fill that vacancy yet, but they’re not bad. My main complaints were that the author seemed ignorant of Chinese buffets (he seems to think you pay after eating), and the addition of a new homosexual character, one assumes in order to fill some quota. But the character isn’t all that annoying, and isn’t on stage too much, so I’ll put up with it for now.