‘Mad River’ spins a tale of a modern-day teenage Bonnie and Clyde

Best-selling author John Sandford said as he began writing the story he became aware of the parallels with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the young outlaws of the Great Depression known by their first names.

“They were driving around the countryside, robbing banks and shooting people. Bonnie and Clyde, to themselves, appeared a little like romantic desperados. They had a glow about them,” Sandford said in a phone interview.

	“Mad River – A Virgil Flowers Novel” by John Sandford G,P. Putnam, $27.95, 387 pp.

Bonnie and Clyde and their gang were believed to have killed policemen and civilians before dying in a police ambush.

In “Mad River,” Sharp and Welsh kill members of their respective families; Sharp also kills a woman from a wealthy family in a suggested gun-for-hire scheme and others. Their sidekick kills a cop after a bank heist.

Sandford sees these teenagers as symbols of a bleak life in rural America.

“The thing is you cannot walk around in the country without realizing the serious problems out there and one of them is that a lot of kids, who may not be the brightest people and may not have the best education, don’t have much of a chance,” he said. “They couldn’t hold down a job at Walmart. What are they going to do?”

What Jimmy Sharp and Becky Welsh do is rob and kill. “They’re angry at the world, at their situation. They can’t get jobs and they’re not very bright,” Sandford said.

When the author worked as a newspaper reporter, he spent time in rural America. And though he doesn’t think of it as violent as urban America, Sandford said “there’s the potential for violence. Everybody has guns and there’s the sense we have to take care of ourselves.”

That attitude applies to a loose cannon of a sheriff in the novel.

“Mad River” is the sixth in Sandford’s series with savvy state detective Virgil Flowers. “Stolen Prey,” Sandford’s latest in the longer-running “Prey” series, was released earlier this year.

Tired of the gray Minnesota winters, Sandford now divides his time between northern New Mexico and California.