Virgil Flowers, of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, works an altogether unremarkable murder and a surprisingly inventive case on the side.The night before Gina Hemming is fished from a frozen river, someone bashes her in the head with a champagne bottle shortly after a meeting of the committee to organize her 25th high school reunion. Since Gina holds the power of the purse over virtually everyone in Tripptonshe inherited the town's bank on her father's deathand the bruises on her body suggest habitual SM play, there are lots of suspects, from Lucy and Elroy Cheever, whose business loan application she was about to deny, to heavy-equipment operator Corbel Cain, her sometime lover, to Fred Fitzgerald, who recently purchased a whip from Bernie's Books, Candles 'n More. But none of them murdered Gina; the opening chapter shows lovelorn exterminator David Birkmann, who's been carrying a torch for her since their school days, killing her when she indicates in the most direct way possible that she doesn't return his interest. The investigation is every bit as routine as it sounds, and it's nice for Virgil that Sandford has thrown in an unrelated complication: the arrival of LA gumshoe Margaret Griffin, who's gotten the Minnesota governor's support in serving a federal cease and desist order against Virgil's classmate Jesse McGovern, who's been doing a brisk mail-order business hawking her X-rated creations, Barbie O and Boner Ken. On second thoughtsince the Barbie knockoffs get Virgil beaten up by four oversized females and his truck burned to the groundit may be less nice for Virgil than for his fan base. As so often in Sandford's small-town adventures (Escape Clause, 2016, etc.), the greatest pleasures here are incidental: clipped conversations, quietly loopy humor, locals mouthing off to and about each other. Pull up a seat, make yourself comfortable, and enjoy. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Under her new name, Milly, Annie is in the care of a psychologist, Mike Newmont, and his family, who are none too even-keeled themselves. Mike's wife, Saskia, is emotionally fragile and his daughter, Phoebe, is a vicious brat. What's more, Mike is secretly writing a book about Milly. Despite all this, the notion of masquerading as a normal kid is irresistible. If only Milly weren't so terrified of turning into her mother, so "scared of finding out who and what I might be." Milly is intellectually and psychologically miles ahead of the grown-ups who keep underestimating her, but living in her head isn't easy. When she isn't analyzing herself for violent tendencies, she's anxiously denying the guilty secrets that might slip out when she testifies against her mother. In her yearning to be good, she cuts her own flesh "to bleed out the bad." But there are times when "it feels good to be bad," and you really don't want to be around for those times. Land is a mental health nurse who has worked with traumatized children, and her portrait of Milly has a powerful sense of authenticity. Her excursions into the twisted psyche of Milly's mother - or, rather, into Milly's keen memories but conflicted feelings about her mother - are less realistic, but more distressing. The harrowing scene in which they meet in court, with only a screen between them, harks back to a disturbing exchange between Milly and her only friend. After mentioning a story about "a girl who was so scared she prayed to be given the wings of an eagle," Milly is asked what the girl was so frightened of. Maybe, she thinks, "The person who was telling the story." AS A WISE old teacher notes in John Sandford's DEEP FREEZE (Putnam, $29), "There is a lot of potential violence in class reunions." But when someone murders the "Girl Most Likely to Succeed" in Trippton High School's class of 1992, following a planning session of the 25 th class reunion committee, no one suspects the "Funniest Boy in the Class of '92" of being the killer. "I can't believe it," someone insists. "It's -f like saying a duck did it." Virgil Flowers, the most laidback agent in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, arrives in midwinter, when everyone is either ice fishing or having illicit sexual adventures, aided by the naughty toys in the back room of Bernie's Books, Candles 'n More. While people are happy to tattle on their friends and neighbors, no one will help Virgil find the "outlaw heroine" who's supporting a lot of poor folks by making pornographic Barbie and Ken dolls. Desperate times demand desperate measures. SCANDINAVIAN CRIME NOVELS don't get much darker than Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q police procedurals. In William Frost's translation of THE SCARRED WOMAN (Dutton, $28), the Copenhagen detective Carl Morek and his eccentric colleagues in the cold case division are conducting two investigations, neither of them very interesting, when Rose, their normally efficient colleague, has a breakdown. Although the details of the childhood trauma that caused her crackup are impossibly lurid, Rose proves far more likable than the stock female victims in this noir series. Lest we think AdlerOlsen is getting soft, he also introduces us to Anne-Line Svendsen, a caseworker in the social security office who has developed a seething hatred for "those damn young women who totally cheated society" by drawing benefits they don't deserve. Unfortunately for her, she commences to attack the most irritating of her clients, Michelle Hansen, at the precise moment when Michelle and another of Anne-Line's clients are plotting to kill her. ONCE UPON A TIME, Peter May began a series of mysteries featuring Enzo Macleod, a forensics expert who took a bet with a Parisian journalist named Roger Raffin that he could use his modern-day skills to solve seven cold cases of homicide, including that of Raffin's wife. CAST IRON (Quercus, $26.99) is the last book in this series and it ends Macleod's quest with a flourish. I would have been happier with less flourish and more forensics, which seemed to taper off drastically after the early cases. Science barely figures in the current book because the victim, Lucie Martin, wasn't found until her bare bones were discovered in a lake bed that had been exposed during a severe drought. Macleod explores the possibility that Lucie was murdered by a man she met while doing social work with recently released felons. But the harried sleuth has so much personal baggage to wrap up - the vindictive ex-wife, the uncertain paternities, the infidelities, the new girlfriend - that he has little time for a proper investigation. MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

*Starred Review* Gina Hemming, the best-looking girl in Trippton, Minnesota's Class of '92, is rich and arrogant, thanks both to her beauty but also to inheriting the local bank from her father. On a cold January night, she gathers a group of classmates at her home to plan their twenty-fifth high-school anniversary. Among the attendees is David Brinkmann, the class clown. David had carried a torch for Gina since the summer after sixth grade. Now that he and Gina were both divorced . . . well, that plan went to hell in no time. Gina is found dead floating in the river, and Virgil Flowers from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is assigned the case. Virgil has worked another case in Trippton and reconnects with his old pal Johnson Johnson (not a typo), who becomes Virgil's unofficial assistant. There's also a parallel plot in which some unknown citizens are turning Ken and Barbie dolls into sex toys. The tenth Flowers novel is a knowing portrait of small-town life layered into a very well plotted mystery. Virgil understands that, in small towns, no one ever outgrows high school, and he uses that knowledge to unravel both mysteries by dissecting the relationships and economic realities in the town. One of the very best novels in a superior series.--Lukowsky, Wes Copyright 2017 Booklist

Actor Conger shines as Sandford's protagonist Virgil Flowers, a lawman with a strong sense of humor. The agent of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Appre-hension doesn't just have the gift of gab, he sees past the gruesome aspects of his investigations to their absurd elements and reacts accordingly. In Virgil's 10th outing, he is sent to the unfriendly town of Trippton, where the corpse of the town's wealthiest woman (who has been murdered) has been plucked from the nearby Mississippi River. Meanwhile, the governor gives Virgil an additional assignment: locate and arrest a woman who's been manufacturing obscene Barbie dolls. But workers in the impoverished town have become dependent on the sexy dolls' sales and prove to be as dangerous as the murderer. Reader Conger has a crisp, resonant voice, and he smoothly conveys Virgil's air of bemusement and the sarcastic edge that appears when he's forced to deal with deceitful suspects and his merrily duplicitous boss, John Duncan. He plays the self-absorbed murderer, identified early on, as weak and depressed, and the others in the town of Trippton, such as Virgil's gruff good-natured pal Johnson Johnson, with specificity. All the characters are as carefully vocalized by Conger as they are developed by Sandford in this satisfying audiobook. A Putnam hardcover. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.