Summoned by Lucas Davenport to investigate a pair of murders in which the victims are found with lemons in their mouths, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers struggles to find a connection that could prevent additional killings.

When a murder suspect commits suicide after his arrest for killing a soybean farmer, Virgil Flowers uncovers a multi-generation, multi-family conspiracy involving a series of monstrous crimes.

Jimmy Sharp, Becky Welsh, Tom McCall. They were 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 is captured on the killers' cell phones and sent to a local...

"In southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to a close. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. "Issues" is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether a local reporter should die. And the vote is four to one in favor. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is doing a favor for a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be turning...

"Whenever you hear the sky rumble, that usually means a storm. In Virgil Flowers' case, make that two. The exceptional new thriller from the writer whose books are "pure reading pleasure" (Booklist) The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. 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. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those...

Virgil Flowers investigates a miracle...and a murder...in the wickedly entertaining new thriller from the master of pulse-pounding thrillers. Pinion, Minnesota: a huge city of all of seven hundred folks who define the phrase 'small town'. Nothing has ever happened in Pinion and nothing ever will...until the mayor of sorts (campaign promise: `I'll Do What I Can') comes up with a scheme to put Pinion on the map. He's heard of a place where a floating...

"An off-duty Coast Guardsman is fishing with his family when he calls in some suspicious behavior from a nearby boat. It's a snazzy craft, slick and outfitted with extra horsepower, and is zipping along until it slows to pick up a surfaced diver . . . a diver who was apparently alone, without his own boat, in the middle of the ocean. None of it makes sense unless there's something hinky going on, and his hunch is proved right when all three Guardsmen...

"Alex Sand was spending the evening at home playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. A wealthy federal judge, there's no short list of people who could have a vendetta against Sands, but the gruesome murders, especially that of his children, turn their St. Paul community on its head. Sand was on the verge of a major donation to a local housing charity, Heart/Twin Cities, and with the money in limbo, eyes suddenly...