Helpful Score: 5
Heat Lightning is a story about a group of Vietnam vets who are being tortured and killed off one by one. Detective Virgil Flowers is the main character and there are splashes of Lucas Davenport throughout the book. Personally, I was really disapointed in the book and had a dificult time getting to the end. I would rate it as BORING.
Helpful Score: 3
I have been a fan of John Sandford for quite some time now. I guess he is best known for the "Prey" series. This is one of the Virgil Flowers books. Flowers is a great character and Sandford is really amazing at letting the reader "see" him. I really loved this book until about 30 pages before the end. It was like Sandford just ran out of gas and started to drift about for awhile. It is a shame, because the book was really great till then.
Helpful Score: 2
Well being a big Davenport fan I figured I would probably like Flowers. It felt just like a Prey book except very boring. I hard a hard time getting into it and then kept going because I trusted Sandford to keep it interesting, alas, it never got much better and the end was just so, so. I think I will pass on Flowers he just feels like a copycat. The casual love interest in every town is believable if you are male, but as a female it is hard enough to swallow with Davenport, don't try to convince me it could happen exactly the same way with Flowers. Oh well I am gald I did not buy the book!
Helpful Score: 2
I wasn't sure I was going to like this book but once I got started on the story it just caught me and I was reading as fast as I could to find out what was going on, very well written (naturally) and grabs you from the first few pages and won't let go!
Helpful Score: 1
This was my first exposure to Virgil Flowers, a wild child member of Lucas Davenport's flying circus, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and I found the serial murder plot average and the Flowers character fuzzy in my mind. I'm not sure John Sanford has a clear picture of him either. I suspect that as Lucas has aged and risen to power and leadership, Sanford wants to introduce a younger, hipper hero to a different demographic group than his traditional fans. If so, this is a noble attempt; but, Sanford needs to put some more flesh on the bones of his new protagonist to keep the new readers coming back!
