The characters are well-drawn but sometimes difficult to differentiate, perhaps because of all the bed-hopping. Virgil’s probe also precipitates another murder (once again, the cover-up is almost always worse than the original crime).ĭeep Freeze is part crime procedural and part riff on small-town life. It’s not hard to imagine how people there keep warm during the winter. The discovery of her frozen body (of course it’s Minnesota) brings Virgil Flowers back to the town, Trippton, where his dogged investigation uncovers a Barbie Doll sex scheme (don’t ask), multiple sex-partner swapping, and ancient high-school hormones inflamed by an upcoming reunion. Unfortunately for both Bug and the Beauty, David forgets he’s holding a bottle of champagne. When he finally gets the chance 20 years after graduation, David makes a clumsy move on his dream girl and, as usual, is “squashed like a bug.” The reader knows right from the start who the killer is, a doofus dubbed “Bug Boy” by his small-town contemporaries because he owns a successful pest-control business and because, well, he was a bit of a nerd in high school.īug Boy, whose real name is David Birkmann, did - barely - and leads a fairly harmless life for years while harboring lustful thoughts about one of his classmates, a now beautiful, if somewhat shallow, woman. In this, the 10th of the Flowers mysteries, there is little mystery. You might have to put a sweater on when reading this novel. Think “Fargo,” the Coen Brothers’ fabulous crime-caper movie. It’s damn cold in Minnesota in the winter! Think ice cubes. And it’s certainly not because Sandford is a poor writer. It’s not because Flowers is an unsympathetic protagonist.

It’s hard to warm up to Virgil Flowers, the Minnesota state investigator who is the hero of John Sandford’s Deep Freeze.

Deep freeze by john sandford