Publisher, Penguin Audio (September 2009)

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It’s a joy to announce that John Sandford is still doing everything right,” wrote the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the second adventure of Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers. “Virgil acts like the best series protagonists—becoming someone we just enjoy spending time with.”

Virgil’s always been known for having a somewhat active, er, social life, but he’s probably not going to be getting too many opportunities for that during his new case. While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, he gets a call from Lucas Davenport to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only, a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic surgery, commune with nature, and while it didn’t start out to be a place mostly for those with Sapphic inclinations, that’s pretty much what it is today.

Which makes things all the more complicated for Virgil, because as he begins investigating, he finds a web of connections between the people at the resort, the victim, and some local women, notably a talented country singer. The more he digs, the more he discovers the arrows of suspicion that point in many directions, encompassing a multitude of motivations: jealousy, blackmail, greed, anger, fear. Then he finds that this is not the first murder, that there was a second, seemingly unrelated one, the year before. And that there’s about to be a third, definitely related one, any time now. And as for the fourth . . . well, Virgil better hope he can catch the killer before that happens. Because it could be his own.

Rich with the brilliant plotting and compulsively readable prose that are his hallmarks, Rough Country is another immensely satisfying tale by one of our very best suspense writers.

About the Author: "Like the best writers in this genre—Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain among them—John Sandford evokes his netherworld with authentic dialogue and meticulous details." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

John Sandford is the pseudonym of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. Camp was born in 1944 and was raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He received his B.A. in American Studies from the University of Iowa, and received his first training as a journalist and reporter when he was in Korea for 15 months working for his base paper.

After the army, Camp spent 10 months working for the Cape Girardeau Se Missourian newspaper before returning to the University of Iowa for his Masters in Journalism. From 1971 to 1978, he worked as a general assignment reporter for the Miami Herald, covering killings and drug cases, among other beats, with his colleague, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edna Buchanan.

In 1978, Camp joined the St. Paul Pioneer Press as a features reporter. He became a daily columnist at the newspaper in 1980. In the same year, he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for an article he wrote on the Native American communities in Minnesota and North Dakota and their modern day social problems. In 1986, Camp won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for a series of articles on the farm crisis in the Midwest.

Camp has written fourteen books in the bestselling "Prey" series under the name John Sandford. The titles in this series, which features Lucas Davenport, include Rules of Prey, Shadow Prey, Eyes of Prey, Silent Prey, Winter Prey, Night Prey, Mind Prey, Sudden Prey, Secret Prey, Certain Prey, Easy Prey, Chosen Prey, Naked Prey, and now Broken Prey.

With the "Prey" series, Sandford has displayed a brilliance of characterization and pace that has earned him wide praise and made the books national bestsellers. He has been hailed as a "born storyteller" (San Diego Tribune), his work as "the kind of trimmed-to-the-bone thriller you can't put down" (Chicago Tribune), and Davenport as "one of the most engaging (and iconoclastic) characters in contemporary fiction." (Detroit News)