Class reunions: a time for memories—good, bad, and, as Virgil Flowers is about to find out, deadly—in this New York Times bestselling thriller from John Sandford.  Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt—and as it turned out, homicidal—local school board, and now the town’s back in view with more alarming news: A woman’s been found dead, frozen in a block of ice. There’s a possibility that it might be connected to a high school class of twenty years ago that has a mid-winter reunion coming up, and so, wrapping his coat a little tighter, Virgil begins to dig into twenty years’ worth of traumas, feuds, and bad blood. In the process, one thing becomes increasingly clear to him. It’s true what they say: High school is murder. Praise for Deep Freeze “Along the way to the satisfying ending, Virgil displays the rough humor and rough justice that make him such an appealing character.”— Publishers Weekly   “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.”— Booklist (starred review)   “The reader’s quest to discover the whole truth will propel them forward, where [Sandford] has plenty of twists (and more than a few laughs) planted along the way. Deep Freeze  is easily one of Sandford’s best Virgil Flowers novels yet.”— The Real Book Spy “Add a gripping storyline, a generous helping of exquisitely conceived characters and laugh-out-loud humor that produce explosive guffaws, not muted chuckles, and you’re in for the usual late-night, don’t-even-think-of-stopping treat when Flowers hits town.”— Richmond Times-Dispatch Praise for Escape Clause “You can't make this stuff up, but, thankfully, Sandford can. Imaginative, funny, and thoroughly engaging.”— Booklist (starred review) “An outstanding novel.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Perfect entertainment for readers whose hearts skip a beat when they worry that the hero won't be in time.”— Kirkus Reviews “The funny, smart, and always entertaining Virgil Flower is back....Some writers get better with age while others get worse. Sandford is like fine wine. The more he ages, the better he is. Escape Clause proves it.”—The Huffington Post “One of the keys to John Sandford's success as an author is his ability to take us inside the twisted psyches of his villains.”— Minneapolis Star-Tribune John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-seven Prey novels, most recently Golden Prey ; four Kidd novels, ten Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels co-authored with his wife Michele Cook. Chapter One     David Birkmann sat in his living room with an empty beer can in his hand and stared sadly at his bachelor’s oversized television, which wasn’t turned on. A light winter wind was blowing a soft, lovely snow into the storm windows. He needed to get out to plow the drive in the morning. He wasn’t thinking about that, or the winter, or the storm.             He’d gotten away with it, he thought. That didn’t make him much happier.             David – he thought of himself as David , rather than Big Dave, Daveareeno, Daveissimo, D-Man, Chips or Bug Boy– didn’t consider himself a killer. Not a real killer.             He was simply accident-prone. Always had been.             Accidents were one reason he’d been elected as Class of ’92 funniest boy, like the totally unfunny time when he hadn’t gotten the corn chips out of the vending machine in the school’s junk-food niche. He’d tried to shake the bag loose and the machine had tipped over on him, pinning him to the cold ceramic tiles of Trippton High School.             Everybody who’d seen it had laughed – the fat boy pinned like a spider under a can of peas – even before they were sure he wasn’t injured.             Even George Marx, the assistant principal in charge of discipline, had laughed. He had, nevertheless, given David fifteen days of detention, plus the additional unwanted nickname of Chips, a nickname that had hung on like a bad stink for twenty-five years.             His own father had laughed after he found out that Trippton High School wouldn’t make him pay for the damage to the vending machine.             Big Dave, Daveareeno, Daveissimo, D-Man... Bug Boy... squashed like a bug.     The latest accident had occurred that night, though David thought it was all perfectly explainable, if you understood the history and the overall situation. He knew that the cops wouldn’t buy it.             The history:             First, his father was the Bug Man of Trippton, the leading pest exterminator in Buchanan County