{"id":5575,"date":"2013-12-02T19:58:32","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T00:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5575"},"modified":"2013-12-02T19:58:32","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T00:58:32","slug":"mad-river-by-john-sandford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5575","title":{"rendered":"'Mad River' by John Sandford"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cHe sort of looked mean, but in a hygienic, Minnesota way.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n

Just recently<\/strong> I reviewed John Sandford\u2019s more recent Virgil Flowers novel, Storm Front<\/a><\/i>, and noted that that book\u2019s light tone, and the fact that nobody got killed in it, typified the less serious quality of the Flowers books, as compared to Sandford\u2019s hugely successful Prey <\/i>novels.<\/p>\n\n\n

After reading <\/a>""“>Mad River<\/a><\/i>, I need to modify that observation. Storm Front<\/i> was a diversion. The Flowers books by and large are plenty violent, though the depravity level is perhaps a notch lower.<\/p>\n\n\n

Mad River<\/i> is a story about a killing spree in south central Minnesota towns, perpetrated by a trio of young losers \u2013 a couple on their way to nowhere and a slacker friend. Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers is tasked with heading up the effort to stop them, and he\u2019s desperately trying to keep them from getting killed by the local cops, not so much out of professional ethics as because he suspects a murder-for-hire angle, and he needs them to tell him who paid them.<\/p>\n\n\n

The whole thing is pretty unpleasant. Sandford accomplishes the difficult task of making these stone killers somewhat sympathetic, but I\u2019m not sure whether I\u2019m grateful for that. There\u2019s some humor, but it\u2019s mostly the graveyard variety. The writing’s good, the characters well drawn and complex. But all in all it was pretty depressing.<\/p>\n\n\n

Recommended on technical grounds, but I can\u2019t say the book was much fun. Cautions for violence, sex, and language.

Addendum, 10:12 p.m.:<\/strong> I just remembered what irritated me most in this book. At one point Virgil, addressing a group of people, uses the pronoun “Y’all.” This is absurd. Virgil is a native Minnesotan, speaking to other Minnesotans. We do not say “y’all” in these parts. I’m certain Sandford knows this. I can only assume the word was inserted by a New York copy editor.
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\u201cHe sort of looked mean, but in a hygienic, Minnesota way.\u201d Just recently I reviewed John Sandford\u2019s more recent Virgil Flowers novel, Storm Front, and noted that that book\u2019s light tone, and the fact that nobody got killed in it, typified the less serious quality of the Flowers books, as compared to Sandford\u2019s hugely successful … Continue reading 'Mad River' by John Sandford<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}