Heat Lightning

Virgil Flowers, Book 2

Moving right along with the Virgil Flowers series, I have to say that I am tickled I'm back up to 10 books a month by finishing this one. So far, both of the fuckin' Flowers books (a reference made inside the books) have been about 410-ish pages long, making them about a 5.5 hour read for me. Lounging around on vacation, these are just about right. And, I can get them from the condo association's library for free. Win!

What I am liking about these books so far, other than the fast-paced, amusing dialog, is the fact that Flowers isn't right the first time. He makes mistakes (OMG, unlike other cops) and he takes a wrong turn, and he guesses. Okay, fine, the author has written him to be human instead of super-human. The man needs to sleep, the man needs to pee. It's great.

This particular book had a few cases where I thought, "If the character finds these things weird, why doesn't he suspect this person?" And you know what? Hindsight is often clearer than live-sight, and we're the reader so OF COURSE we know what's going on. Except it isn't always clearer, and we don't always know what's going on, and the good guy doesn't always win. One could say in real life, the good guy rarely wins, it's the victor who just claims to be the good guy and writes history.

I enjoyed this book, ripped through it fast enough, even though the mystery was a little thin with some obvious plot holes. If I were giving stars, which I'm not, this one would be 4 of 5, and I would definitely say, keep reading.