Escape Clause

Two rare tigers are siphoned off a zoo. The onus of recovering them is shouldered by Virgil Flowers. If the animals were stolen by Chinese medicine makers, as he suspects, he has very less time to do his job, because they may be murdered any moment due to logistical reasons.

This is far better than Storm Front, the last Virgil Flowers novel by Sandford that I read. The story is good, the humor is just ok and there is enough built up of tension and suspense to satisfy me. I loved the antagonist. He starts off as a petty criminal, ends up really horrible and the trajectory is well etched. What I hated was that the protagonist was pathetic. He is so dim-witted that most of the clues are prompted to him by side kicks. Even on combat he is pretty much an embarrassment. If it's intentionally done that way (like the infinitely better and wittier Dortmunder novels), it is a bad move and doesn't generate any laughs.

I <3 Virgil and I <3 Jenkins and Shrake so it's always a fun time when they get together. It kind of did crack me up that the focus was on animals again, but it drove me nuts how close Virgil would get to the tigernappers and just miss them. There's so many other things going on at the same time too. I wanted to get a little closure with Sparkle's investigation and I did come out of this wanting a series with Catrin as the main character. hint, hint Sandford