Eric

A Really Nice Entry in the Series

Revisado: 12-10-24

A few of the later entries in the Lucas Davenport series have been less than great, but this is one of the good ones. It features fun interaction between Davenport and Flowers, decent action and three dimensional bad guys. It's always better when Mr. Sandford spends time with the bad guys so we can see why they are doing what they doing. It raises the stakes, especially when you have the baddies having to worry and plot against their fellow felons. Keep 'em comin' Mr. Sandford. Please.

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Scattered, Messy, loses Momentum

Revisado: 09-13-24

This story had the makings of a good novel, but every time the story starts to get moving, the author hits the brakes with flashbacks and backstories which drag the story down. Additionally, the supposed main character, Alex, is flat, uninteresting and not really that good at his job. Almost al the "evidence" he has is figured out by other people. And the relationship between characters is poorly drawn. The book could have been more bearable with a different narrator. The main character is supposed to have a British accent, it is mentioned numerous times, but the narrator is unable to pull it off. Sorry. I don't recommend this one.

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A Great Premise, But An Unlikeable Protagonist

Revisado: 03-11-23

I was looking forward to and really wanted to like this small town mystery concerning a 20 year old missing woman case in a poor Irish suburb. The premise is excellent and the locale is perfect, but the story is marred by a main character who is un-likeable, who argues with everyone and does not seem to be smart enough to be the important detective he is supposed to be. The story makes way too many leaps of logic and substitutes tedious, often pointless, argumentative dialogue for dramatic action in almost every chapter. Most importantly, the listener has no reason to like the protagonist, no reason to root for him. The local language and feel for the lower-class suburb is excellent and the narrator is very good, though there are a few scenes between brothers where it is difficult to tell which brother's dialogue is being spoken. With such a good premise and good location, this book could have been so much better.

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Just meh . . .

Revisado: 11-16-18

Being a serious John Sandford fan, I always look forward to the latest Prey or Virgil Flowers novel, but Holy Ghost was a bit of a letdown. This Virgil Flowers case wasn't a very compelling mystery to start with and except for a couple of townsfolk, it was lacking the kinds of unusual characters that f@#king Flowers usually gets to deal with. And I think there were two really big things missing in this one. First, it lacked the sense of urgency, drive or momentum that Sandford is so good at. Rather than being driven to a conclusion, it felt like a series of episodes on the way to a finish. And secondly . . .there was no interesting bad guy. The more interesting, or smart or lucky a bad guy that Virgil faces, the better Virgil is. In this case, he didn't have that interesting of an antagonist to battle.
I'll keep my fingers crossed that this book is just a momentary dip and that the next one will be as awesome as his other books in this series.

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Virgil Flowers Solving Big Crimes in Small Towns

Revisado: 10-23-17

After reading so many books about serial killers in New York or LA or some other giant metropolis, it is always refreshing when we find Virgil 'F#@king' Flowers battling crimes in small town mid-America where the characters and settings are unique. In this one, dealing with a sort of accidental murder, the characters and the humor really stand out. From Virgil's girlfriend to Johnson Johnson to the small-town deputy that assists him, the dialogue is fast and often very funny. The plot is pretty good too, not knowing how Virgil will resolve this one. Thank you, Mr. Sandford!

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Good Plot Lost Amid Too Many Cliched Threads

Revisado: 10-23-17

The basic premise, a serial killer stalking 'sinful' girls in Victoria B.C., is good but gets lost in an avalanche of plot threads and story arcs built out of TV police procedural cliches. The author seems to have decided that overwhelming the reader with dozens of superficially sketched side characters and stories fills up a story, but it just obscures it. The author should have cut the characters in half and spent time giving the ones remaining real full lives instead of relying on types and instead of writing as if antagonistic relationships equate to story tension. They don't. And if I read one more of these books where the cliched lead character has been profoundly damaged by some childhood event or a family murder and spends the entire story "coming to grips with it" or "seeking closure", I will type the review in UPPERCASE. Making your character an angry 'victim' isn't characterization. It's laziness.

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Davenport as US Marshall But Without the Old Gang

Revisado: 05-01-17

Davenport's first assignment as a US Marshall sends him south on the trail of a trio involved in the murder of five people and the theft of millions in drug money. At the same time, the drug cartel has sent two assassins after the trio, making it a race to see who will catch up to the killers first. I confess to missing the old gang of fellow police officers and friends from Davenport's years in Minnesota as the two federal marshals that end up as quasi-sidekicks don't yet have the depth of character to be very interesting. On the other hand, though, the 'bad guys', from the trio involved in the murder and robbery to the two then four thugs hired by the cartel are fully fleshed out and really interesting characters with complicated motives and unique relationships. Smart, fascinating and driven villains always make a story like this better and Sandford's Davenport books have always been better when the bad guys were fully realized like they are here. Not quite as good as the best Prey novels, but Golden Prey is a pretty good addition to the series.
As always, Richard Ferrone's narration is amazing. I can't imagine listening to any other reader of the Prey novels. In fact, when I read, rather than listen to any of this series, it is Richard Ferrone's voice in my head as I read.

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Self-Absorbed, yet Lacking Self-Awareness

Revisado: 02-22-17

I really wanted to like this book. I really did. I read all the negative reviews and figured that maybe those reviewers were just too jaded or maybe being insensitive to a young woman's problem and her attempt to deal with it. I was going to read this book and like it in spite of the negative reviews. Well . . . I'm sorry to say that those negative comments were pretty accurate. This author is so over-the-top in self absorption and yet totally lacking any semblance of self-awareness that is in painful to read. She seems incapable of seeing how pampered and babied she is, incapable of learning from anything she's done and sees herself as everybody's potential victim. I wanted to root for some sort of real understanding on her part, but it is hard to feel any empathy, any sympathy for a spoiled rich girl who couldn't even dress herself until high school, who couldn't operate a washing machine in college and who had never had any kind of real job. Hard to feel pity for her travails on the trail when mommy and daddy provide a cell phone, sat phone, GPS, credit card and drop boxes from Whole Foods at every trail crossing. And her constant wallowing in her "shame" and her low self-esteem or her self-proclaimed ugliness just gets pathetic.
If she wants those of us in the real world to understand her "burden", the author needs to actually live in the real world for a while.

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Okay Trail Journal Hobbled by Poor Narration

Revisado: 02-17-17

Seven foot tall Bill Walker attempts to bring a Southerner's perspective to a hike on the West's greatest trail, the PCT, but unfortunately falls short. Failing to book-end his writing or give it a goal like Bryson or Strayed or even Carrot Quinn, it becomes just another trail journal, cataloging his navigation failings, hunger and sore feet instead of becoming a real story. He doesn't spend enough time with the people he meets along the hike and never offers any insight into their character or quirks. He touches on bits of history from time to time, but they seem barely connected to the story and lack the humorous or ironic historical perspective one always gets from Bryson. The biggest drawback is, unfortunately, the author's narration. It is flat and uninteresting and he seems to have problems pronouncing many of the words and names he himself has written. And no, its not due the his Georgian accent.
I wanted to like this book, but I'm afraid I found it disappointing.

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Still Relevant After Forty Years

Revisado: 03-24-16

The Pardey's, cruising legends who inspired countless others, write in a simple, light straight forward way that makes for enjoyable reading and/or listening - especially with Kitty Hendrix's excellent narration. Though the book recounts their adventures in the late sixties and early seventies, it still has some application to cruising today. Communities have changed, prices have changed, seas have become more crowded, but the joys and struggles of a couple working their way slowly and carefully from California to England still resonates. Especially in the appendixes, the Pardey's enumerate the very practical points to consider if one is interested in a life of cruising. Updated to the early 2000's, they bring to bear the results of surveying other world cruisers and present hard cold facts for a potential cruiser / sailor to consider before pulling anchor. It makes you take seriously their "motto": Go Simple, Go Small, Go Now.

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