You could drive the car someplace and drop it off, though you’d have to be careful about DNA and fingerprints. The last matter was particularly perplexing. Kill somebody, and there were all kinds of logistics to work out how to keep your DNA off the victim, how to get rid of the body, what to do with the dead man’s car. Killing people was actually a pain in the ass. Sordid encounters between the bad guys abound, and there are some really nasty murders committed by the lead sociopath, Readers get a peek into his twisted internal dialogues: The theft of the tigers forces Flowers into dealing with a truly demented killer. Flowers learns that “the tiger’s real value-they’re Amur tigers, and they’re rare in the wild-would be as ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine.” Readers know whodunit from page one, but that doesn’t destroy the suspense, which comes down to the ticking clock pressuring Flowers ever forward in hopes of finding the tigers before they become so much grist for the Chinese medicinal mill.

Two tigers have been stolen from the Minnesota Zoo. This time around, an endangered species is at risk. Flowers is an unconventional investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension who, in previous entries, has been involved in some fast-paced thrillers. Virgil Flowers, once a bit player in John Sandford’s Prey series, has become the starring character in his own series, which is in its 9th installment with Escape Clause. “You mess around with Sparkle,” Frankie told Virgil, “you could get yourself stabbed.” “She carries a knife?” “No, but I do.Escape Clause by John Sandford is the 9th installment of the Virgil Flowers series. For another…she thinks Virgil’s kind of cute. 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. 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. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others-as Virgil is about to find out. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need.

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. The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. The exceptional new thriller from the writer whose books are “pure reading pleasure” ( Booklist ). Summary: Whenever you hear the sky rumble, that usually means a storm.

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