John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers novels are a spinoff from his better known Prey thrillers starring Lucas Davenport. Virgil is a field investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who prefers to operate in the small towns and open countryside of rural Minnesota, where he can bring his boat along for a little fishing on the side, and find interesting stories for his other, part-time job as a free lance writer for outdoors and hunting magazines. This is number 11 in the Flowers series and it has all the trademark humor mixed in with the details of criminal investigation that distinguish Sandford's style.
Wheatfield, Minnesota was drifting inexorably into oblivion until the Virgin Mary suddenly manifested herself before a congregation of elderly parishioners and Mexican migrant workers at the local Catholic church. Overnight it seems the town is inundated with pilgrims hoping to witness the miracle for themselves. The apparitions jump start Wheatfield's economy and many of the local inhabitants are happy to share in the profits --- especially the mayor and his precocious teenage sidekick, who have opened a store catering to the tourists right across the street from the church, seemingly overnight. Pretty much everyone in town is thrilled with how things are going. Until somebody starts taking potshots at the pilgrims.
When Virgil Flowers arrives and starts stirring the pot, all kinds of things begin rising to the surface. As Virgil soon realizes, nothing in Wheatfield is as simple as it seems.
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