Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Book Summary and Reviews of Shock Wave by John Sandford

Shock Wave by John Sandford

Shock Wave

A Virgil Flowers Novel

by John Sandford

  • Critics' Consensus (0):
  • Published:
  • Oct 2011, 400 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

The superstore chain PyeMart has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two very angry groups want to stop it: local merchants, fearing for their businesses, and environmentalists, predicting ecological disaster. The protests don't seem to be slowing the project, though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands.

The first bomb goes off on the top floor of PyeMart's headquarters. The second one explodes at the construction site itself. The blasts are meant to inflict maximum damage - and they do. Who's behind the bombs, and how far will they go? It's Virgil Flowers's job to find out... before more people get killed.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Sandford effortlessly conjures up the rhythms and personalities of a small town in one of his best outings to date." - Publishers Weekly

"The tale drags at times, but the mystification and detection are authentic and the solution surprisingly clever. Virgil fully deserves to have Willard Pye kiss his ass." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about Shock Wave 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.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

John Sandford Author Biography

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 ...

... Full Biography
Link to John Sandford's Website

Other books by John Sandford at BookBrowse
  • The Hanged Man's Song jacket
  • The Devil's Code jacket

21 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Shock Wave, try these:

  • The Association of Small Bombs jacket

    The Association of Small Bombs

    by Karan Mahajan

    Published 2016

    About this book

    The Association of Small Bombs is an expansive and deeply humane novel that is at once groundbreaking in its empathy, dazzling in its acuity, and ambitious in scope.

  • Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist jacket

    Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

    by Sunil Yapa

    Published 2016

    About this book

    The Flamethrowers meets Let the Great World Spin in this electrifying debut novel set amid the heated conflict of Seattle's 1999 WTO protests.

  • The Hit jacket

    The Hit

    by Melvin Burgess

    Published 2014

    About this book

    Live the ultimate high. Pay the ultimate price. The shocking return to YA by the author of Smack.

We have 10 read-alikes for Shock Wave, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!
Win This Book
Win Theo of Golden

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…

Enter

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
A Pair of Aces
by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
Two women on opposite sides of the law team up to bring down gangster Lucky Luciano in this gripping novel.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    Summer's Never Over
    by Darby Bozeman
    A woman revisits a Southern summer camp where a counselor's death may not have been an accident.
  • Book Jacket
    The Reimagining of Thornwood House
    by Jaleigh Johnson
    A witch and her ward discover a magical walking house and find the true meaning of home.
  • Book Jacket
    Feast
    by Catherine Kurtz
    In 19th-century France, a girl with a magical taste becomes a duc’s poison taster amid nobility and danger.
  • Book Jacket
    Somebody Worth Killing
    by Jessica Payne
    Meet Nadia Davis, loving mom, devoted wife, secret assassin… and she needs a babysitter.
Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

S the B

and be entered to win..

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.