-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Virgil Flowers Novel
Virgil's always been known for having a somewhat active, er, social life, but he's probably not going to be getting too many opportunities for that during his new case. While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, he gets a call from Lucas Davenport to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only, a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic surgery, commune with nature, and while it didn't start out to be a place mostly for those with Sapphic inclinations, that's pretty much what it is today.
Which makes things all the more complicated for Virgil, because as he begins investigating, he finds a web of connections between the people at the resort, the victim, and some local women, notably a talented country singer. The more he digs, the more he discovers the arrows of suspicion that point in many directions, encompassing a multitude of motivations: jealousy, blackmail, greed, anger, fear. Then he finds that this is not the first murder, that there was a second, seemingly unrelated one, the year before. And that there's about to be a third, definitely related one, any time now. And as for the fourth . . . well, Virgil better hope he can catch the killer before that happens. Because it could be his own.
"It's a complicated case, but Virgil is up to the task, and, as always, he's funny, smart and tough when he needs to be—and catnip to the ladies." - Publishers Weekly
"Readers may at first share the verdict of Virgil's fishing buddy—"I thought it would be interesting, but it's just nasty"—but following the trail to McDill's killer proves as interesting as hooking and landing a 40-pound musky." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Rough Country was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Sandford is the pseudonym of John Roswell Camp, an American author and journalist. Camp won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1986, and was one of four finalists for the prize in 1980. He also was the winner of the Distinguished Writing Award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for 1985.
Camp is the author of more than forty published novels, all of which have appeared, in one format or another, on the New York Times best-seller lists. He is also the co-author of three young-adult books in the Singular Menace series, with Michele Cook, and co-author of the science-fiction thriller Saturn Run with Ctein.
He is the author of two non-fiction books, one on art The Eye and the Heart: The Watercolors of John Stuart Ingle and one on plastic surgery, Plastic Surgery: the ...
If you liked Rough Country, try these:
by Charlotte Runcie
Published 2026
A theater critic at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe writes a vicious one-star review of a struggling actress he has a one-night stand with in this sharply funny, feminist tinderbox.
by Matt Greene
Published 2013
A brilliant and moving coming-of-age story in the tradition of Wonder by R. J. Palacio and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - this debut novel is written with tremendous humor and charm.
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise
by Julia Stuart
Published 2011
Brimming with charm and whimsy, this exquisite novel set in the Tower of London has the transportive qualities and delightful magic of the contemporary classics Chocolat and Amélie.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
