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Bad Blood
562 pages
A laid-back detective peels back the veneer of a quiet Midwestern farming community to reveal a rotting core of generational depravity.
What it feels like
Reading this thriller feels like driving down a quiet Midwestern backroad only to realize you are being hunted. It balances the laid-back, wry charm of its unconventional protagonist with a deeply unsettling, rural-gothic atmosphere. The pacing is brisk and dialogue-driven, pulling the reader through a claustrophobic maze of small-town secrets and generational corruption. The prose is lean and pragmatic, grounding the disturbing, dark subject matter in gritty realism. It is a book that delights fans of hardboiled police procedurals who appreciate a sharp contrast between a breezy, cynical detective and the suffocating dread of the crimes he investigates. You will feel the chill of hidden depravity long after the final page is turned.
- Mood
- unsettling
- tense
- claustrophobic
- rural-gothic
- Tone
- wry
- cynical
- pragmatic
- gritty
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- small-town corruption · generational trauma · hidden depravity · the banality of evil
- The writing
- Lean, dialogue-heavy, and unpretentious, with a sharp ear for Midwestern vernacular.
- The arc
- Moves from sudden, shocking violence into a deepening sense of dread before culminating in a tense, hard-won resolution.
- Who it's for
- Fans of hardboiled police procedurals who enjoy a laid-back, unconventional detective navigating deeply disturbing crimes.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- sexual abuse
- incest
- suicide
- murder
About the book
In this Virgil Flowers novel, best-selling and critically acclaimed author John Sandford reveals how a group justifies their criminal actions. Bad Blood opens with a young man committing murder and being arrested, only to be found hanging dead in his jail cell the next morning. Suspecting homicide, the sheriff calls Virgil, who uncovers a multigenerational, multifamily conspiracy of murder and sexual depravity the likes of which their small town has never known.
Narrated By: Eric Conger.
Description from Open Library.
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