Dark of the Moon by John Sandford (English) Paperback Book

Description: Dark of the Moon by John Sandford Introduced in "Invisible Prey," Detective Virgil Flowers goes it alone. Three murders in just as many weeks in the quiet rural town of Bluestream is unheard of. Its also no coincidence. And its not over: Flowers is about to be pulled into the middle of a killers violent personal vendetta. Available in a tall Premium Edition. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description The first Virgil Flowers novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author John Sandford."Virgil Flowers, introduced in bestseller Sandfords Prey series, gets a chance to shine...The thrice-divorced, affable member of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), who reports to Prey series hero Lucas Davenport, operates pretty much on his own.."*Hes been doing the hard stuff for three years, but hes never seen anything like this. In the small rural town of Bluestem, an old man is bound in his basement, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Three weeks before, a doctor and his wife were murdered. Three homicides in Bluestem in just as many weeks is unheard of. Its also no coincidence. And its far from over... Author Biography John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-six Prey novels (most recently Extreme Prey); four Kidd novels; eight Virgil Flowers novels; two YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook; and three other books, including Saturn Run. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Review "Sandford keeps the reader guessing and the pages turning while Flowers displays the kind of cool and folksy charm that might force Davenport to share the spotlight more often."—*Publishers Weekly"Flowers is a welcome addition to [Sandfords] body of work."—Chicago Sun-Times"[Sandford] maintains the page-turning momentum that makes his novels such a treat. If you liked Lucas, youll love Virgil."—The Tampa Tribune"A book that will keep you turning pages, guessing, and completely immersed—and engrossed—in whatever Sandford wants to throw at you. Its a great ride, and Sandford proves that sometimes its not the character, its not the series, its the writer."—The Post and Courier"An adrenaline rush peppered with laugh-out-loud moments."—Booklist Review Quote "Sandford keeps the reader guessing and the pages turning while Flowers displays the kind of cool and folksy charm that might force Davenport to share the spotlight more often."--* Publishers Weekly "Flowers is a welcome addition to [Sandfords] body of work."-- Chicago Sun-Times "[Sandford] maintains the page-turning momentum that makes his novels such a treat. If you liked Lucas, youll love Virgil."-- The Tampa Tribune "A book that will keep you turning pages, guessing, and completely immersed--and engrossed--in whatever Sandford wants to throw at you. Its a great ride, and Sandford proves that sometimes its not the character, its not the series, its the writer."-- The Post and Courier "An adrenaline rush peppered with laugh-out-loud moments."-- Booklist Excerpt from Book DARK OF THE MOON ALSO BY JOHN SANDFORD Rules of Prey Shadow Prey Eyes of Prey Silent Prey Winter Prey Night Prey Mind Prey Sudden Prey The Night Crew Secret Prey Certain Prey Easy Prey Chosen Prey Mortal Prey Naked Prey Hidden Prey Broken Prey Dead Watch Invisible Prey KIDD NOVELS The Fools Run The Empress File The Devils Code The Hanged Mans Song DARK OF THE MOON JOHN SANDFORD G. P. PUTNAMS SONS NEW YORK Acknowledgment Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Acknowledgment This book was written in cooperation with my friend Larry Millett, an architectural writer (The Curve of the Arch, Lost Twin Cities), local historian (Strange Days, Dangerous Nights), and occasional novelist (Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon and four other tales featuring Holmes and Irish barkeep Shadwell Rafferty). Millett was recently described in a general-circulation magazine as "handsome," which threw me into paroxysms of jealousy, but which, in the end, did not deflect us from our appointed deadline.... --JOHN SANDFORD 1 SIX GARBAGE BAGS full of red cedar shavings, purchased two at a time for a dollar a bag, at midnight, at the self-serve shed at Dunstead & Daughter Custom Furniture, serving your fine cabinetry needs since 1986. No cameras, no lights, no attendant, no theft, no problem. Moonie stacked the bags in the basement, Cross Canadian Ragweed pounding through the iPod ear-buds, singing about those dead-red lips; then up the stairs, pulling the ear-buds, to where the old man lay facedown on the rug, shaking, kicking, crying, trying to get free. Tied with cheap hemp rope, but no matter. The old man was so old and so feeble that string would have worked as well as rope. "Please," he groaned, "dont hurt me." Moonie laughed, a long singing rock n roll laugh, and at the end of it, said, "Im not going to hurt you. Im going to kill you." "What do you want? I can tell you where the money is." "The moneys not what I want. Ive got what I want." Moonie gripped the rope between the old mans ankles and dragged him to the basement stairs, and then down the stairs, the old mans face banging down each tread as they went. "Oh my Jesus, help me," the old man wept through his bloody lips, his fractured face. "Help me, Jesus." Thump! Thump! Thump! Nine times. "Jesus isnt going to help," Moonie said. The old man pulled it together for a second. "He can send you to hell," he snarled. "Where do you think I am, old man?" "You..." "Shut up. Im working." GETTING THE OLD MAN onto the bags was the hardest part. Moonie first threw him facedown on the topmost bag, then heaved his feet up. The old man was tall, but frail; eighty-two years old and sedentary and semi-senile, though not so senile that he didnt know what was happening now. He sank down into the bags of wood shavings and thrashed there, got halfway off, then sank down between them, thrashed some more, then quit. Wood shavings made for the most intense fire, and left no obvious residue; or so the arson fans theorized on the Internet. Moonie got busy with the first five-gallon can of gasoline, pouring it around the basement, around the bags, soaking the old man with it, the unused wooden canning racks, the seldom used workbench, the stack of aging wooden lawn chairs, and then up the stairs. The old man began thrashing again. Moaning, "Please..." The first few splashes of gasoline smelled good, like the shot you got when you were pumping gas into your car; but down in the enclosed space, five gallons of gas, the fumes got stiff in a hurry. "Dont die on me. Wait for the fire," Moonie called, backing up the stairs, splashing gas along the steps. The second can was poured more judiciously around the first floor, soaking into the Persian carpets, leaking around the legs of the Steinway grand piano, flowing into the closets. When two-thirds of it was gone, Moonie backed through the kitchen, where the first can, now empty, waited. Moonie would take them. No point in making the arson obvious, though the police would probably figure it out soon enough. A driving rain beat against the kitchen windows. Ideally, Moonie would have preferred to trail the gas out into the yard, and to touch it off from a distance. With the rain, though, that would be difficult. The rain would wash the gas away as quickly as it was poured. So it would have to be kept inside. A small risk...the fumes boiled unseen around the killers ankles, flowing into every nook and cranny. At the kitchen door, Moonie splashed out a final pool of gas; stopped and looked into the house. The place was huge, expensive, and a wreck. The old mans housekeeper came in twice a week, did some dishes, washed some clothes; but she didnt do carpentry, wiring, or plumbing, and the house needed all of it, along with a wide-spectrum exterminator. There were bugs in the basement and bats in the belfry, the killer thought, and then, giggling now, a nut in the kitchen. The old man cried a last time, faintly audible against the sound of the rain and wind... "Please, God help me..." Good to know he was still alive--the old man would get the full experience. Moonie stepped through the kitchen door onto the back porch, took out a book of matches, scratched one, used that one to set off the entire book. The book cover caught, and Moonie played with it, enjoying the liquid flow of the flame, getting it right, then threw the book toward the pool of gas in the kitchen, turned, and ran out into the rain. The fire popped to the top of the pool of gasoline, flickered across it, snaked one way into the living room, under the shambles of the once grand piano, and the other way, like a living thing, down the stairs into the basement. The fumes in the basement were not quite thick enough for a real explosion. The old man, surrounded by bags of wood shavings, heard a whump and felt the sudden searing heat of a blowtorch that burned away all feeling in an instant, and killed in the next. That was all for him. 2 Coming Up on Midnight THE RAIN WAS POUNDING down from a wedge of thunderstorms, and Virgil Flowers was running west on I-90, trying to hold the truck against the angling wind. Hed been due in Bluestem before the courthouse closed, but hed had a deposition with a defense attorney in Mankato. The attorney, a month out of law school with his first criminal case, had left no stone unturned and no verb unconjugated. Not that Virgil blamed him. The guy was trying to do right by his client. Yes, the gun had been found in that dumpster. The dumpster had not been hauled before Wednesday, June 30, even though it was normally dumped on Tuesday, but everything had been pushed back by Memorial Day. The pizza guy had seen the defendant on the 29th, and not the 28th, because the pizza parlor, as patriotic as any Italian-food outlet anywhere, had been closed on Memorial Day, and the pizza guy hadnt been working. Three hours of it: Blah, blah, blah... By the time he got out of the lawyers office it was five oclock, too late to get to Bluestem while the courthouse was open. Walking along with Lannie McCoy, the prosecutor in the case, theyd decided that the wise course would be to get sandwiches and beer at Cats Cradle, a downtown bar. They did that, and some cops showed up and that all turned into an enjoyable nachos, cheeseburger, and beer snack. One of the cops was very good-looking, and at one juncture, had rested her hand on Virgils thigh; perfect, if her wedding ring hadnt shown up so well in the bar light. A sad country song. HE LEFT the Cradle at six-thirty, went home, dumped a load of laundry in the washing machine. With the washer rattling in the background, he sat on a rocking chair in his bedroom and finished sewing a torn seam on a photography vest. Sat in a cone of light from his bedside reading lamp, sewing, and wondering about the married cop whod come on to him; thinking a bit about loyalty and its implications, and the trouble it could bring you. Feeling a little lonely. He liked women, and it had been some time since the last one. When he finished with the vest, he hung it in his gear closet--guns, bows, fishing and photography equipment--took a shotgun and two boxes of shells out of his gun safe, laid them beside an empty duffel bag. He half filled the duffel bag with underwear, socks, and T-shirts, three pairs of jeans. Still waiting for the washer to quit, he went out on the Internet, looking for a letter from a magazine publisher. A letter was supposed to be waiting for him, but was not. He pulled up a half-finished article on bow hunting for wild turkeys, dinked with it until the washer finished the spin cycle, then closed down the computer, threw the wet clothes in the dryer, and took a nap. The clock woke him. After a shower, as he was brushing his teeth, he heard the dryer stop running. His timing was exquisite. He took the clothes out of the dryer, folded them, put some of them away, and some of them in the duffel bag. He threw the bag in the back of his truck, locked Details ISBN0425224139 Author John Sandford Short Title DARK OF THE MOON Language English ISBN-10 0425224139 ISBN-13 9780425224137 Media Book DEWEY FIC Year 2008 Residence MN, US Birth 1944 Series A Virgil Flowers Novel DOI 10.1604/9780425224137 Series Number 1 Place of Publication New York, NY Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2008-09-30 NZ Release Date 2008-09-30 US Release Date 2008-09-30 UK Release Date 2008-09-30 Pages 448 Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Format Paperback Publication Date 2008-09-30 Imprint Penguin USA Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:43658370;

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