John Sandford on 'Mad River'

'Mad River' by John Sandford
Book cover courtesy of publisher

Author John Sandford has just come out with a new thriller, "Mad River." It's the fifth installment in his Virgil Flowers series about a rural Minnesotan cop. Flowers feels just as comfortable fishing in the middle of a lake as he does at a murder scene. His character first appeared in Sandford's Prey series, which follows the sharp-dressed Lucas Davenport in and around the Twin Cities.

From his interview with NPR:

Virgil's the kind of guy who can stand on the street corner and have a long, complicated conversation with people he doesn't know because he's a friendly guy. Part of that has grown out of my own irritation with the cops who, you know, are doing an investigation and they can't tell you about something. Why can't they tell you about it? The criminal knows about it; they know about it, so why shouldn't they tell the public? They're being paid by the public. So, they have this thing, like, this is kind of private information. Why not just tell people? So, that's what Virgil does. If somebody asks him about the case, he'll tell them about it. Maybe Virgil will find out something useful by talking about it. So, in that one story in particular he's sitting at a diner down in southern Minnesota and the people from the diner are perfectly happy to chip in.

We'll air Kerri's conversation with Sandford on The Daily Circuit Monday.

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