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Escape Clause (A Virgil Flowers Novel Book 9) by [John Sandford]

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John Sandford

Escape Clause (A Virgil Flowers Novel Book 9) Kindle Edition

by John Sandford (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4,955 ratings

Book 9 of 12: A Virgil Flowers Novel

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Whenever you hear the sky rumble, that usually means a storm. In Virgil Flowers’ case, make that two. The exceptional new thriller from the writer whose books are “pure reading pleasure” (Booklist).

The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. Two large, and very rare, Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they’ve been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others—as Virgil is about to find out.

Then there’s the homefront. Virgil’s relationship with his girlfriend Frankie has been getting kind of serious, but when Frankie’s sister Sparkle moves in for the summer, the situation gets a lot more complicated. For one thing, her research into migrant workers is about to bring her up against some very violent people who emphatically do not want to be researched. For another…she thinks Virgil’s kind of cute.

     “You mess around with Sparkle,” Frankie told Virgil, “you could get yourself stabbed.”
     “She carries a knife?”
     “No, but I do.”

Forget a storm—this one’s a tornado.

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399 pages
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English
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G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date

October 18, 2016
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1243 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

PRAISE FOR THE VIRGIL FLOWERS SERIES

“Another brainy thriller from a prolific author, Deadline fulfills readers’ expectations of Sandford’s fiction: tense, smart and character-driven.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Sandford’s best Flowers book to date. This book is the most fun I have had reading in a long time.”—The Huffington Post

“The biggest joys of this series are Flowers himself (his boss is Lucas Davenport from Sandford’s Prey novels), the case of eccentric supporting characters, and the humorous dialogue.”—Shelf Awareness

“Pure reading pleasure.”—Booklist

“Sandford keeps one last surprise up his sleeve, and it’s a doozy. Exhilaratingly professional work by both Virgil and his creator.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Rich characters [and] the descriptions of small-town life, politics and corruption and the concurrent trails of action make for a fast and entertaining read.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

About the Author

John Sandford is the pseudonym for Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John Camp. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Prey series featuring Lucas Davenport, the Kidd series, the Virgil Flowers series, three YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook, and three other books, most recently Saturn Run. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

            Peck popped a Xanax, screwed the cap back on the pill tube, peered over the top of the bush and through the chain link fence, and in a hoarse whisper, asked, “You see the other one?”
            The big man with the rifle whispered, “Right by that tree, above the first one. She’s looking down at him.”
            “Get her.”
            The big man rested the muzzle of the rifle in the V of one of the chain links, pulled the trigger: the rifle made a “pop” sound, not much louder than a handclap. They waited, staring into the darkness, then Peck said, “Ah, you dumb shit, you missed her. You missed her. She should be down, but she’s not. She’s moving.”
            “Might have hit that brush, deflected the shot...”
            “She’s moving out in the open. Reload,” Peck said.
            “I’m doing it, get off my back, will ya?”
            “Can you see her now?” Peck asked. “She’s getting curious about why the guy’s just lying there.”
            Pop.
            “Got her. Saw it hit,” the big man said.
            “Sure she’s down? We don’t want to make a mistake.”
            “She’s going down now...” the big man whispered, “I’m pretty sure.”
            Peck could smell the nicotine and tar on the other man’s breath. The big guy was addicted to Akhtamar Black Flames, and almost always had one stuck to his lower lip; but not now. Peck reached out and slapped him on the back of the head and said, “I don’t want to hear that pretty sure. You know what happens if you’re wrong? We’re dead men.”
            “You fuckin’ slap me again and I’ll stick the gun butt up your ass and twist it sideways.”
            A small man, crouched on the other side of the rifleman, “I saw them get hit. I saw it, man. Both of them. But who knows if it was enough?”
            They all went silent for a moment, squinting into the dark. Two bodies lay in the short grass, unmoving. The fence was twenty feet high and stouter than a normal chain link; a prison fence. With no sign of movement on the other side, Peck said, “Hamlet: cut the fence.”
            “What if they’re faking?” The small guy had half-circles under his eyes, so dark they looked like broken blue poker chips.
            “You’re the one who said they got hit,” Peck said. The soapy touch of Xanax was slipping into his brain.
            The small guy said, “Maybe we oughta split. I’m not feeling so sure about this.”
            “We’re here. It’s done. Cut the fuckin’ fence,” Peck said.

            Hamlet’s side-cutters made a grunt sound as he snipped each piece of wire. Grunt-grunt-grunt. They’d come well-equipped: they wore rubber kitchen gloves and black clothing and trucker hats and, in addition to the gun, had brought a roll of black duct tape they’d use to put the fence back together when they left.
            Hamlet was cutting a wide oval in the fence, leaving it hinged on one side. He’d gotten halfway around the oval when the big man, Hayk, hissed and touched his brother’s arm and whispered, “Someone’s coming.”
            They sank into the brush and Hayk moved the muzzle of the rifle around until it pointed out at the perimeter road. Twenty seconds later, a man in a gray uniform ambled along the road, looking at nothing in particular, talking to himself.
            When he was directly opposite them, forty feet away, they heard him say, “I told him not to give her the money. She’ll blow it on herself. That’s what she’ll do, and you know it. It won’t get to your mom. She doesn’t care about your mom...”
            Peck realized that the security guard was wearing an ear piece and was talking into a cell phone. He lost the thread of what the man was saying as he disappeared around the curve of the frontage road. When the guard was well out of earshot, Hamlet whispered, “I think he had a gun.”
            “No, he didn’t – I checked that out,” Peck said.
            “Not in the middle of the night.”
            “The guards are not armed,” Peck said.
            Hayk said, “Ham, keep cutting. We’re almost there.”
            Hamlet went back to cutting and, two minutes later, pulled open the cut curve of fencing, like a gate.
            Peck said, “Go on. Crawl through there.”
            “Why don’t you crawl there?” Hamlet asked.
            Peck had no immediate answer for that, and the Xanax now had a good grip on him, so he said, “All right, I will. Hold the fence.” Hamlet pulled the fence further back. When Peck was through, he turned to Hayk and said, “Give me the gun.”
            “Not loaded.”
            “That’s okay, I’m gonna use it as a poker.”
            Hayk handed him the gun and Peck crawled fifteen feet to the first body and poked it with the gun’s muzzle. No reaction. That was a good thing. The other body was ten feet further on. He poked that one, too, got no response.
            He turned around and whispered, “We’re good.”
            “Told ja,” Hamlet said, too loud.
            Peck whispered, “Shut up, you fuckin’ moron. Get the dollies in here.”

            Hayk pushed the dollies through the hole in the fence and rolled them over to the bodies. The dollies were the kind used by garden shops, with a flat bed and wide soft wheels.
            “Goddamn, heavier than hell,” Hayk said, as they lifted the first body onto a dolly. They couldn’t see much further than fifteen or twenty feet away, and the moon didn’t help: it sat right on the western horizon and splashed a silvery light off the trees around them. The contrast made it hard to discern shapes and movement.
            “Gonna have to push them through the fence one at a time, right out to the perimeter,” Peck said. Despite the Xanax, he was sweating heavily, not from the hot summer night, but from fear. He could smell the stink of it on himself.
            They loaded the second body on the second dolly and pushed them one at a time through the fence. Then Peck and Hayk dragged the dollies through the brush to the edge of the perimeter road, while Hamlet pulled the fence back into its original configuration and taped some of the cut ends together with strips of the black duct tape. Five quick repairs and the fence looked like new, in the night, anyway.
            When Hamlet joined the others out at the perimeter road, Peck said, “I’m going to scout. When you see the laser, bring them.”

            They nodded and he moved slowly along the edge of the perimeter road, where he could quickly step into the brush if he needed to. Peck had planned the whole operation and he knew there were only a couple of night guards. From that point-of-view, having a guard pass by only minutes before was a good thing, if a little unnerving. That meant the other guard was a half mile away, and the one they’d seen probably wouldn’t be back around for an hour or more.
            The perimeter road curved gently to Peck’s right. When he’d gotten to the exit point, and had seen nobody, he stepped out to the road’s edge, took a laser pointer from his chest pocket, aimed it back toward Hayk and Hamlet, and played the red light-dot across their hiding place.
            A minute later, in the ambient light from the parking lot, he saw them move out onto the road, pulling the dollies with their motionless loads. They moved slowly at first, and then more urgently, and finally began to trot.
            The tires were almost, but not quite, silent; there was no one but Peck to hear them. When Hayk and Hamlet came up, Peck led them across the road to another chain link fence, which they’d already cut. They rolled the dollies through the fence, down a mild slope to the edge of a grassy yard, with a darkened house eighty feet away. They waited there while Hamlet repaired the second fence, this time with silver duct tape. A scummy pond lay off to their left, home to any number of green-and-black frogs. Earlier in the summer, when they were making scouting trips, the frogs had been croaking their froggy asses off. Now that Peck could use the covering noise, they were resolutely silent.
            Hamlet finished with the fence, and they eased the dollies across the yard to the back door of the garage, pushed the door open and pulled the dollies inside and closed the door. Hayk took a flashlight out of a cargo pocket and turned it on.
            The van was ready, cargo doors open. They rolled the dollies up a handicapped ramp into the back of the van, closed the doors. Hamlet and Hayk got into the van, Hayk as the wheelman, while Peck went to the door into the house, stepped inside and looked out a kitchen window at the street.
            He was looking out at a suburban neighborhood, a bunch of three-bedroom houses where everybody worked day jobs and the kids went to school: the houses were almost all dark, and the street was empty.
            He hurried back to the garage, pulling the house door closed behind himself, and pushed the wall switch for the garage door opener. The garage door went up, but no light came on, because Peck had thought of everything: they’d loosened the garage light. Hayk drove the van out of the garage, Peck pushed the wall switch again and the door started down.
            There was an ankle-high infra-red safety light that beamed across the door opening, to keep the door from closing on children who might be standing beneath it. Peck stepped carefully over it – he really had groomed the plan, he thought, with nothing left to chance – went to the van, and climbed into a back seat.
            Hayk rolled it down to the street, took a right, and Hamlet said, “Made it.”


Chapter Two

            The cloudless sky was blue, of course, but the pale blue that tended almost to green, if you were lying naked in a Minnesota swimming hole on a hot summer day, looking up through the branches of the creek-side cottonwoods, thinking about nothing much, except the prospect of lunch.
            Virgil Flowers was doing that, bathed in the cool spring water and the scent of fresh-mown hay. Frankie Nobles’s oldest son was windrowing the teddered hay, riding a ’70s International Harvester tractor, the all-original diesel engine clattering up and down the eighty-acre field on the other side of the crooked line of cottonwoods.
            Virgil usually managed to evade the whole haying process, pleading the exigencies of law enforcement, but with this last cut of the summer, Frankie had her eye on him. All her farm equipment was marginal, and though a neighbor would be over with his modern baler and wagon, two-thirds of the bales – the small rectangular ones – would be unloaded in the barnyard.
            From Virgil’s point of view, there was one good thing about this – the neighbor would keep a third of the hay for his trouble. The bad thing was, somebody would have to load the other two-thirds of the bales on Frankie’s ancient elevator, and somebody would have to stack it in the sweltering, wasp-infested barn loft.
            “Why,” Virgil asked, “are barn lofts always infested with wasps?”
            “Because that’s life,” Frankie said, back-floating past him on a pair of pink plastic water-wings. She was unencumbered by clothing. They’d have the swimming hole to themselves until the tractor stopped running, and then the boys would take it over. For the time being, their privacy was assured by a sign at the beginning of the path through the woods, that said, Occupied, with newcomers required to call out before entering. “In the hay-lofts of life, there are always a few wasps.”
            “I’m allergic to wasps,” Virgil ventured. He was a tall blond man, his long hair now plastered like a yellow bowl over his head.
            “You’re allergic to haying,” Frankie said.
            “I can’t even believe you bother with it,” Virgil said. “You have to give a third of the hay to Carl, to pay for his time and baling equipment. Whatever hay you manage to keep and sell, the feds and state take half the money. What’s the point?”
            “I feed the hay to my cattle,” she said. “We eat the cattle. There are no taxes.”
            “You don’t have any cattle,” Virgil said.
            “The feds and state don’t know that.” She was another blond, short and partially slender.
            “Please don’t tell me that,” Virgil said. “Your goddamn tax returns must read like a mystery novel.”
            “Shoulda seen my mortgage application,” Frankie said. “One of those ninja deals – no income, no job. Worked out for me, though.”
            Honus, a big yellow dog, lay soaking wet on the bank, in a spot of sunshine. He liked to swim, but he also liked to lie wet in the sun.

            Frankie kicked past and Virgil ducked under water and floated up between her legs. “You have a very attractive pussy,” he said.
            “I’ve been told that,” Frankie said. “I’ve been thinking of entering it in the state fair.”
            “I could be a judge,” Virgil offered.
            “You certainly have the necessary expertise,” she said.
            “Speaking of state fairs...Lucas should have been killed,” Virgil said, floating back a bit. “I can’t believe the stories coming out of Iowa. I talked to him about it last night, he’s up to his ass in bureaucrats, like nothing he’s ever seen. He said he’s been interviewed a half-dozen times by the FBI. The goddamn Purdys almost blew up the presidential election. Would have, if he hadn’t been there.”
            “Lucas is a crazy man,” Frankie said. “He chases crazy people. That’s what he does, and he likes it. Anyway, that’s the Iowa state fair. I’d enter the Minnesota state fair.”
            “Probably do better, as far as getting a ribbon,” Virgil said. Frankie’s knees folded over his shoulders. “Lucas said the Iowa blondes are really spectacular.”
            Frankie said, “Wait a minute, are you sayin’ that I’m not spec…”
            She stopped and they turned their faces toward the path. Somebody was scuffling down through the trees, in violation of the “Occupied” sign. Honus stood up and barked, two, three times, and Virgil and Frankie dropped their feet to the rocky bottom of the swimming hole, and Frankie called out: “Hey! Who’s there?”

            The scuffling continued for a few more seconds, then a tall, slender, wide-shouldered blonde emerged on the path and chirped, “Hi, Frank.”
            Frankie said, “Sparkle! What are you doing here?”
            “I’m about to go swimming,” she said. There was more scuffling behind her, and a heavy-set man who probably thought he looked like Ernest Hemingway, with a Hemingway beard and Hemingway gold-rimmed glasses, stepped out of the woods. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a schematic drawing of a host and chalice, and beneath that, the words, “Get Real. Be Catholic,” plus cargo shorts and plastic flipflops.
            He looked down at them and said, “Hello, there.”
            Sparkle pulled her top off – she was small-breasted and didn’t wear a brassiere – then her shorts and underpants and jumped into the swimming hole. When she surfaced, Frankie snarled, “You really, really aren’t invited.”
            “Oh, shut up,” Sparkle said. She looked at Virgil. “You must be the famous Virgil fuckin’ Flowers.”
            Virgil said, “Yeah. Who are you?”
            Sparkle frowned at Frankie and said, “You’ve never told him?”
            Frankie looked like she was working up a full-blown snit. “No. Why should I?”
            Sparkle turned back to Virgil and said, “I’m Frankie’s baby sister.”
            Virgil said to Frankie, “You have a baby sister?”
            “Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” Frankie said.
            “Careful,” Sparkle said. “You don’t want to piss off Father Bill.”
            They all looked at the heavy-set man, who had removed his t-shirt, glasses and watch, and was now stepping out of his shorts, to reveal a dark brown pelt, speckled with gray, that would have done credit to a cinnamon bear. “That’s me,” he said. He flopped into the swimming hole, came up sputtering, and said, “Gosh. Nobody told me it’d be this cold.”
            “What’s the Father Bill stuff?” Frankie asked.
            “I’m a priest,” Bill said, shaking his head like a wet dog. “Part-time, anyway.”
            “He’s a priest nine months of the year, and a bartender and libertine the other three,” Sparkle said.
            “I work over at the Hanrattys’ Resort during the summer, tending bar,” Bill said. “I’m a fill-in priest for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis the other nine.”
            “Must be nice for you,” Frankie said.
            “It’s convenient all the way around,” Bill said. He had a mild, low-pitched voice that came out as a growl. “The Hanrattys are always hard-up for seasonal help, and the bishop gets a fill-in guy and only has to pay him for nine months.”
            “And you get laid,” Frankie said.
            “A fringe benefit,” Bill said.
            “Hey! I’m a fringe benefit?” Now Sparkle was clouding up, or faking it, pushing out her lower lip. Virgil hadn’t seen the family resemblance before: Sparkle was tall and slender, Frankie was short and busty. They clouded up exactly the same way.
            “Okay, a major fringe benefit,” Bill said.
            “That’s better.”
            “Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” Frankie said again. To Sparkle: “What are you doing here?”
            “Well, I thought I’d stop by and see my beloved sister – and I’m also doing the last bit of research for my dissertation.” She rolled over on her back and paddled past Virgil, a not uninteresting sight.. “I’m interviewing migrants at the Castro canning factory. I thought Bill and I could share your spare bedroom.”
            Frankie scrutinized her for a couple of heartbeats, then asked, “Does old man Castro know about this?”
            “I haven’t made what you’d call appointments, no,” Sparkle said.
            “You’re going to get your ass kicked,” Frankie said. “He’s a mean old sonofabitch. When it’s about to happen, give me a call. I want to come and watch.”
            “I was hoping Virgil could have a chat with the line manager over there…you know, about prisons and stuff.”
            “You don’t be dragging Virgil into this,” Frankie said.
            “What’s your problem, Frankie? Virgil’s a cop, it’s a part of his job,” Sparkle said.
            “He investigates after the ass-kicking, not before,” Frankie said.
            “What’s this all about?” Virgil asked. “Why is…Sparkle?...going to get her ass kicked?”

            Sparkle, back-floating between the cop and the priest, explained: she was working on her Ph.D dissertation about seasonal migrant labor, both the social and economic aspects, at the University of Minnesota. She’d spent two years among the vegetable-growing fields of southern Minnesota and was now moving upstream to the factories. When she had incorporated the factory material, she’d have her doctorate.
            “Why would that get your ass kicked?” Virgil asked.
            “Because old man Castro has a deal with this village down in Mexico,” Sparkle said. She dropped her feet to the bottom of the pool. “They provide him couples to pick the cucumbers and work in his pickle factory. He pays the man a buck or two above the minimum wage, which makes him look like a hero, but the wife also works and doesn’t get anything – so his pickers and factory workers are making a little more than half the minimum wage, when it’s all said and done. He would rather not have this documented.”
            “And you’re going to write that in your dissertation?” Virgil asked.
            “I am.”
            “Okay. I can see why you might be headed for an ass-kicking,” Virgil said.
            “See? Crazy shit,” Frankie said to Virgil. “You should introduce her to Lucas, since Lucas likes crazy shit so much.”
            “Who’s Lucas?” Sparkle asked. She’d turned to her sister and stood up in waist-deep water, her back to Virgil. He noticed that she had an extremely attractive back, tapering down to a narrow waist. Backs were largely unappreciated in women, Virgil thought, but not by him.
            “Another cop,” Frankie said. “Actually, ex-cop. He’s the one who saved Michaela Bowden’s life down at the Iowa State Fair last week.”
            “Really!” Sparkle said. “I would like to meet him.”
            “Ah, for Christ’s sakes,” Frankie said a third time.
            Father Bill had ducked his head under water, and had come up sputtering. “I don’t mean to be critical on such short acquaintance, but do you think you might find some way to employ vulgarity or obscenity, rather than profanity, at least when I’m around?” Father Bill asked Frankie. “A nice round ‘Oh, shit’ or ‘Fuck you’ is much easier to accept than your taking of the Lord’s name in vain.”
            “Ah, Jesus,” Frankie said.
            Virgil said quickly, “She means the Puerto Rican, not the Lord.”

            The two women paddled up the swimming hole, where the creek came in, nagging at each other. Virgil stayed at the bottom end of the pool, with Bill, and Bill apologized for their abrupt entrance, saying “Once Sparkle starts to roll, there’s not much you can do about it.”
            “Is her name really Sparkle?”
            “No, but it’s what everybody calls her,” Bill said. “Somebody at Hanratty’s told me that her birth name was Wanda.”
            They looked after the women, who’d gotten to the top of the pool, where the water was shallow. They floated there, still arguing, then Frankie stood up and dove forward. Bill’s eyebrows went up as she did it, and he said, “Oh, my. When the Good Lord was passing out breasts, it looks like Frankie went through the line more than once.”
            Virgil said, “Yeah, well…I guess.”
            Bill: “You’re embarrassed because I’m a priest and I’m interested in women?”
            Virgil said, in his quotation voice, “Kiss and rekiss your wife. Let her love and be loved. You are fortunate in having overcome, by an honorable marriage, that celibacy in which one is a prey to devouring fires or unclean ideas. The unhappy state of a single person, male or female, reveals to me each hour of the day so many horrors, that nothing sounds in my ear as bad as a the name of monk or nun or priest. A married life is a paradise, even where all else is wanting.”
            “Really,” said Bill, sounding pleased. “Who said that?”
            “Martin Luther. In a letter to a friend.”
            “Luther. I don’t know much of Luther, other than he had horns, a forked tale and cloven hooves instead of feet. But he said that? You’re the religious sort?”
            “Not so much – at least, I’m not that big a believer in institutions,” Virgil said. “My old man is a Lutheran minister over in Marshall. He used to soak me in that stuff and some of it stuck.”
            “Good for him, good for him,” Bill said. “You’ll have to send me a citation for that letter, so I can read it all. Martin Luther, who would have thought?”
            “Is this relationship with Sparkle…a long-term thing?” Virgil asked.
            “No, no, it isn’t. I’ve spent time with her the last two summers, but of course, the other nine months I’m celibate and she doesn’t put up with that.”
            “That seems very strange to me,” Virgil said.
            “It seems fairly strange to me, too, but I find both sides of the equation to be rewarding,” Bill said. “Of course, I may go to hell.”
            “No offense, but I don’t think the Church gets to decide who goes to hell,” Virgil said.
            “I’m not offended,” Bill said cheerfully. “In fact, I agree. Don’t tell the Church I said that.”

            The two women came paddling back and Frankie hooked an arm around Virgil’s sun-pinked neck and said, “Sparkle’s going to be here for a while. You keep telling me you’re going to get a queen-sized or a king-sized bed, and this would be a good time to do to do it, because I’m going to be sleeping over a couple times a week.”
            “I can do that,” Virgil said. “That old bed is shot anyway.”
            Frankie said to Bill, “You can go ahead and fuck Sparkle, but I don’t want her squealing and screaming and all that – keep it quiet. I got kids.”
            Bill said to Sparkle, “Maybe we ought to find another place.”
            “No, no, no…this is convenient and I like hanging out with my nephews,” Sparkle said. “Another thing is that Castro’s goons won’t find me out here. Besides, if you tie me up and gag me, nobody’ll hear a thing.”
            They all looked at Bill who said, “Sometimes I have to struggle to keep my head from exploding.”
            “That’s called the Sparkle effect,” Frankie said.

            The four of them paddled around for a while, until, from the bank of the swimming hole, a phone began playing the Theme from Jaws. Honus stood up and woofed at it, then lay back down, and Frankie said, “Uh, oh.”
            Sparkle: “What’s that?”
            “The priority number from the BCA,” Virgil said. “It usually means the shit has hit the fan, somewhere. I gotta take it.”
            He’d hoped the other two would leave before he had to get out of the water, but all eyes were on him as he manfully waded out of the swimming hole and sat on the bank, fumbled the phone out of his jeans.
            Jon Duncan calling. “Jon, what’s up?”
            “We need you up here,” Duncan said. “Right away, this afternoon.”
            “What happened?”
            “That whole thing down in Iowa, at the state fair last week, has upset the apple cart,” Duncan said. “You know our fair starts this week, there’re gonna be more politicians up here, campaigning. We’re worried about copy-cats.”
            Virgil groaned. “Man, don’t make me work the state fair.”
            “No, no, we got that covered,” Duncan said. “But everybody’s committed now at the fair, and we’ve got a new problem. A big one.”
            “What’s the problem?”
            “Somebody stole the Amur tigers from the zoo last night,” Duncan said. “Apparently shot them with a tranquilizer gun and hauled them out of there. Since it’s a state zoo, it’s our problem.”
            “What? Tigers?”
            “Yeah. Somebody stole the tigers…two Amur tigers. Pride of the zoo. Listen, man, you’ve got to get up here,” Duncan said. “There’s gonna be a media shitstorm starting tonight on the evening news. We gotta get the tigers back: and we gotta get them back right now. And alive.” --This text refers to the paperback edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01BD1SSA8
Publisher ‏ : ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons (October 18, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 18, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1243 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 399 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #39,110 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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John Sandford

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John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of the Prey novels, the Kidd novels, the Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels co-authored with his wife Michele Cook.

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Steven Kelber

Not the best of the series

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2017

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I am a Virgil Flowers/Lucas Davenport/John Sanford addict, but this one did not make it for me. The crooks were too stupid, the plot too straightforward, the solution too easy. It would not do to discuss the plot details, but most of the time in this series, the solution is a combination of cleverness on the part of Flowers and a minor slip by the bad guys, or something Flowers latches on to. These crooks are hopeless, and as the story moves along, are simply more hopeless.
There are some disconnects in the story - at one point Honus is with the girlfriend and then is magically transported from Frankie's place to Virgil's Mankato home. Sanford novels are usually more carefully crafted than that. For my money - part of Virgil's character is the ease with which he charms all women (okay, I am envious). Virgil is a one woman guy in this book - nothing wrong with that, but it takes something off of his character.

47 people found this helpful

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ricracTop Contributor: Baking

Page-turning, have to see what happens next stories - Highly recommend John Sandford.

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2017

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The Virgil Flowers Series by John Sandford
I’d read all Sandford’s “Prey” novels then decided to order the most recently released Virgil Flowers one. That lead to my ordering all the rest of this series. After they’d all arrived, I put them in publication order. Beginning with the first of the series,I began a John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers series reading marathon. If you’re a mystery/thriller fan you’ve probably read Sandford
and know what to expect. Excellent character development, good descriptions of people and places, interesting story lines, plots with twists and turns, real life, although not for the sensitive to vulgarity, conversations and page-turning, have to see what happens next stories. Rather than get into the storyline of each book in the series, since so many other reviews have already done that, I think that pretty much says it all. The one thought I had after completing each one was…”How does he come up with all these different story lines?” If you like reading mystery/thriller books, I highly recommend John Sandford.

41 people found this helpful

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David A. Freas

One of the better books in this series

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2021

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On the whole, I like Sandford’s Virgil Flowers books. More so now that he has ended the habit of everyone referring to Virgil as ‘that f*****g Flowers’ (a term that got very tiring very quickly) on every page. And he didn’t remind me who a character was every time he or she appears on the page.

Mercifully, too, Sandford has not continued along the ‘Virgil saves the world’ path he went down a couple books ago. Some authors get on this road and never leave it, never have their main characters returning to solving more realistic crimes. Here, Virgil is hunting the men who stole a pair of endangered Amur tigers from a zoo.

There is a lighter touch to this story as Virgil encounters temptation in the form of his girlfriend’s naked sister, a hapless Xanax-popping bad guy, and revenge seeking brothers. There’s also brutality in the form of several cruel murders and violent assaults.

Like in his ‘Prey’ series books (and like Jonathan Kellerman), Sandford writes short scenes – sometimes only a sentence or two long – that break up the flow of the narrative. They make for a storyline that doesn’t flow as smoothly as it could if they were combined into one longer scene, but make it easy to put the book down by providing frequent stopping points.

Sandford also has his bad guys brought down not by Flowers but by other means. Readers like the main character to carry the day, solve the crime, and make the bad guys pay for their sins. When someone else does it, the reader (at least this reader) feels cheated to some extent.

Sandford fails to deliver on one subplot hinted at in the cover blurb and storyline (unless he plans to expand on it in future books) and again has his wrap up stretch a little too long, diluting the end of the story.

Escape Clause is one of the better books in this series, so I’ll be back for more Virgil Flowers books.

2 people found this helpful

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Steven Meisel

Standard Sandford

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2017

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Escape Clause is a very predictable and familiar entry in the Virgil Flowers series. It follows Sandford's usual formula: the talented but irreverent cop, an odd crime that escalates into murder and mayhem, the inevitable scrapes and risks, and culminating with the capture/end of the bad guy(s). With his prolific output of 2-4 books/year, it seems Sandford is writing the same book again and again and only changing some of the details. Nevertheless, the formula works; like most of his entries, Escape Clause is an easy, entertaining, and quick read; perfect for a snowy weekend, beach, or airplane ride. Just don't expect much in the way of "depth" or fine prose.

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Lord Fred

John Sandford - regrettably not this time

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2017

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I thought the book was just OK it wasn't as far as I'm concerned up to the usual Sanford high standard.

It was interminably long in getting to the point where we could feel that there was a conclusion to be had. It seemed like we went over and over the same ground time and time again. The only thing that kept me going was it was a Sandford book and something unexpected was going to happen to Virgil Flowers. It didn't happen and it was a lack lustre finish. Terribly disappointing as the previews seemed to offer so much.

12 people found this helpful

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Ruby Batchelor

OK, but not one of his best

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2021

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I love Sandford's Virgil Flowers series, but this isn't one of his best for a couple reasons, the 1st being that it's just not as wonderfully fun & wryly funny as "Holy Ghost" or "Deep Freeze" for example. It's also impossible to give a hoot about many of the characters, & the bad guys are about as engaging as the instructions on the back of a pill bottle. All of which is to say, it's not horrible, but it's not a GOOD example of a Virgil Flowers crime novel.

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Elaine Tomasso

Fun

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 23, 2017

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Escape Clause is another great adventure for the hapless Minnesota BCA in vestige tor Virgil Flowers or as he is more commonly called "That f****** Flowers".

Virgil's cases are never straightforward so he is the logical choice when 2 rare Amur tigers are stolen from the zoo. With no clues or suspects and a variety of possible motives it will be an uphill battle. Slowly but surely he makes progress but with many obstacles in the way, like murder, Armenian gangsters and his girlfriend Frankie's sister, Sparkle's insistence on investigating the local employment of illegal immigrants until it all comes together in a glorious finale.

I look forward to every Virgil novel and have thoroughly enjoyed Escape Clause. Most of it is down to his character. He is laid back and wisecracks his way through the novel, giving off a slightly incompetent air but don't be fooled he is a smart, sharp investigator who always wins through. I'm not so sure about his relationship getting serious with Frankie - will I love him so much if he is taken? Just kidding.

The novel is all about the humour, which seems very natural and you feel as if you could chip in at any point, and it is a fun way to pass a few hours. There were points when it had me laughing out loud. It does have a serious side, however, about animal abuse and immigrant labour. There is no preaching just examples of them which occur as a natural part of the story.

Escape Clause is a great read which I have no hesitation in recommending.

One person found this helpful

Lagoon

Escape claws

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2018

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The wonderfully named Winston Peck VI spends his days strung out on Xanax. He’s overly relaxed and that may be as well seeing as he has just assisted in stealing two rare Amur Tigers from the local zoo. Aiding him in this highly audacious act are two of the Simonian brothers. The Tigers are to be used for Chinese medicine.

Naturally, Virgil is soon on the case and it doesn’t take him long to get the Simonian brothers on his radar. They are part of a bigger clan and their brothers have some wonderful cameo appearances throughout this book. From the Simonians, it is not much of a leap to our discredited and strung out doctor, or MD. Following Virgil whilst he tightens the net on Peck is a delight and there are echos here of Hiaasen at the top of his game.

As has been the case with other Flowers novels, there is a side story running parallel to the main action and this involves Virgil’s girlfriend and her younger sister, Sparkle, getting involved in investigating a sweatshop factory. This isn’t as strong as the subplots in some of Sandford’s other Flowers novels, but the scrapes that Peck gets himself into here more than make up for that.

The subject matter means that the story gets grizzly at times but Sandford always entertains you throughout. If you want some escapism, snap this up.

Mig Bardsley

Entertaining light read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 6, 2017

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Entertaining and readable. A bizarre tale of the theft of two tigers, from a zoo, to be used for ancient Chinese medicine and featuring the detective, Virgil Flowers. The chief villain's gradual disintegration was what carried the tale which was otherwise quite far fetched. Virgil himself is a remarkably blank character - he shows some brief emotion when his girlfriend get beaten up but otherwise is free from all the cliched passions often attached to detective characters. There's a good deal of gory dismemberment some of which is mildly amusing. Mr Sandford writes coolly about murder, violence and abuse and, almost in passing, mentions some social issues such as the bad treatment of immigrant workers. I might read more of his work.

Amazon Customer

Best crime novel I’ve read for ages

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2017

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Sandford really knows how to write a decent novel. The characters, both men and women, are well drawn and balanced with no sexist stereotypes.

Virgil Flowers, the main male lead, is in pursuit of a gang of crims who have kidnapped two rare tigers from a local zoo with the aim of converting them into traditional Asian remedies. The gang starts targeting Virgil’s nearest and dearest...no further comments for fear of spoilers.

The pace is fast, the tone is light, and joy of joys, it is very well proofread. Try a Virgil Flowers novel out, if you’ve not done so already.

One person found this helpful

TimC

Not to be missed by fans of Sandford

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 31, 2017

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Yes I know it is a murder, and the perp is a crazy sociopath but I laughed out loud at some of the events on the way to the denouement. Flowers is involved (again) with a crime concerning animals, a number of familiar characters turn up including the female detective saved by Lucas Davenport from a cellar. This manages to be convincing and at the same time ridiculous so if that is to your taste I strongly recommend it. After all a skinny dipping Catholic priest and a bunch of Armenian hard nuts with baseball bats do not turn up in my reading every day.

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