It is October is Battenberg, Minnesota, and 19 year old star athlete Bobby Tripp is working at the Farmer's Co-Op, when for no apparent reason he murders another farmer with a baseball bat. It is a fairly easy assignment for the medical examiner to determine cause of death as homicide.

Newly elected sheriff Lee Coakley arrests Bobby; when she returns to speak with him the next morning, she finds him dead in his cell, an apparent suicide. However, some of the evidence points to the overnight deputy, Jimmy Crocker, who lost the election for sheriff. Coakley calls upon Virgil Flowers, an agent with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (his boss is Lucas Davenport, the protagonist of the Prey series), to avoid the political nature of this case.

When Virgil arrives at the deputy's house, he is also found dead of an apparent suicide. But, wait. Perhaps this is a homicide as well. During his interrogatories, Virgil learns of a young girl murdered in Iowa the year before which may also be related to the case.

  From this most auspicious beginning, Bad Blood turns into a very slow moving police procedural with Virgil discussing the evidence at the local diner and interviewing nearly everyone in the town of Battenberg. He discovers a connection with the World of Spirit, a strange religion which homeschools children and whose participants dress in dark clothing. There is also the rumor of strange sexual practices. Could this cult be involved in the murders? Virgil, the son of a Lutheran minister, uses the scripture to help with his interviews of the World of Spirit.  

Bad Blood is an acceptable read that readers may find too sexually graphic. However, acceptable is not what we usually expect from John Sandford.

--Jerry Solot