John Sandford (2018) Holy Ghost.

Holy Ghost is ‘A Virgil Flowers Novel’. That may be meaningless. As it was to me. Although being brought up a Catholic, I know who the Holy Ghost is, or was, or ever will be. And I know who Stephen King is.  When the cover gives a Stephen King blurb:  ‘One of the greatest novelists of all time’, you’ve got to look, even though you know hokum when you hear it.

I know now who Virgil Flowers is. John Sandford has written around 30 books. Many with Virgil Flowers as a protagonist in search of an antagonist. Flowers is an easy-going, women loving hard ass who likes country music and has hooked up with the one he loves for sure, or sure enough. He’s hooked up with Frankie, who wears hippie dresses and has hips and breasts and all the right figures. She has a son, Sam, from a previous life and yellow dog that needs its chin scratched. Flowers is the kind of quirky idea of the American everyman. His job with Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) gives him license to go out and wrangle with those bad guys and women and bring them to justice. Here’s hoping Trump is on his list.

‘Wardell [is] the mayor of Wheatfield, Minnesota’.

First line in book.

Wardell has a pension. He’s a war veteran. The population of Wheatfield hovers around 600 folks. But is continually falling. No work. No prospects. Townsfolk leave. Wardell has been elected twice as in landslide victories, which were protest votes, much like Binface versus Nigel Farage and Binface won. But this is fiction.

Holland is desperate enough to do something really stupid to make a few bucks (the American way) to help the town and help it turn around.

John Jacob Skinner is 17, born and bred in the dying Midwestern town. Wardell doesn’t need much persuasion that what they need is a miracle. There’s a Catholic church in town. The congregation is mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants. What if the Virgin Mary appeared and gave a message of hope to them?

The Virgin Mary has put many small towns on the map.

Janet Fischer had been engaged to a deadbeat truck driver for nine years. Whether she was still a virgin wasn’t a question most townsfolk considered, but she was a head-turner.

When the Virgin Mary appeared, so did pilgrims, tourist and the media. The town was booming.

None of this would have been of much interest to Virgil Flowers or Minnesota BCA in the same way that the mass looting of the American economy by Trump Incorporated seems little interest to the American people.

But then the shootings started outside the church. Flowers arrives to find out who is behind them. But while he’s there, the third shooting is the murder of an elderly, local and church-going woman.

There’s no motive. No reason for the shootings that Flowers can figure. But for Flowers to solve the crime and catch the culprit(s) he needs to dive deep into who knows what about whom in the small town. He needs to talk to folk.

Most of the clues come in dialogue with some diversions, and that’s the secret of Flowers’ success. No sex. No drugs. Bad guys (and women) get what they deserve. It’s all in the sauce. Read on.