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.