Mad River: Book summary and reviews of Mad River by John Sandford

Mad River Summary

Bonnie and Clyde, they thought. And what's-his-name, the sidekick. Three teenagers with dead-end lives, and chips on their shoulders, and guns.

The first person they killed was a highway patrolman. The second was a woman during a robbery. Then, hell, why not keep on going? As their crime spree cuts a swath through rural Minnesota, some of it captured on the killers' cell phones and sent to a local television station, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers joins the growing army of cops trying to run them down. But even he doesn't realize what's about to happen next.

Mad River Reviews

"In this high-octane thrill ride, bestseller Sandford's fifth novel featuring Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers (after 2011's Shock Wave), Lucas Davenport, Virgil's boss (and star of his own series), dispatches Virgil to a remote corner of the state to deal with 'a bad one'...Virgil's penchant for wisecracking, which in less skilled hands could have been annoying, serves to deflate the tension, and his backstory is simple enough to allow new readers to easily keep up." - Publishers Weekly

"Sandford explores the unstable dynamics among the three fugitives and raises questions about how any of the easily identified culprits can ever be brought to justice...None of these minor complications, though, are enough to raise Virgil's sixth (Shock Wave, 2011, etc.) much above the level of a highly competent but routine manhunt." - Kirkus

"The latest superb Virgil Flowers police procedural (see Shock Wave and Bad Blood) is a great manhunt thriller. The fast-paced storyline is filled with shocking twists of a Mad River, but especially a late one as the audience nears the delta in which John Sandford proves he is one of the sub-genre best when the author laid out clues but hid them brilliantly." - Genre Go Round Reviews

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John Sandford Author Biography

John Sandford is the pseudonym of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. Camp was born in 1944 and was raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He received his B.A. in American Studies from the University of Iowa, and received his first training as a journalist and reporter when he was in Korea for 15 months working for his base paper.

After the army, Camp spent 10 months working for the Cape Girardeau South East Missourian newspaper before returning to the University of Iowa for his Masters in Journalism. From 1971 to 1978, he worked as a general assignment reporter for the Miami Herald, covering killings and drug cases, among other beats, with his colleague, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edna Buchanan.

In 1978, Camp joined the St. Paul...