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martyfried 's review for:
Heat Lightning
by John Sandford
I'm glad I discovered this series. It's my favorite type of casual reading - a good plot, interesting characters and dialog, and a bit of scattered humor to keep from taking it too seriously.
The story here is complex and interesting. I had no idea what was going on until it was revealed near the end, where we find that more or less nobody is what they seem to be.
I like that the lines are not so sharp between good and evil. Virgil, the cop, doesn't like using a gun, wears t-shirts from obscure bands, and doesn't draw such sharp lines between right and wrong, legal and illegal, etc, as some cops. He's more interested in justice, not punishing people for mistakes or petty crimes, many of which he knows about personally.
He never really wanted to be a cop. His degree was in environmental science, but there's not much demand for that. He likes to write nature articles for magazines, he sometimes toes a fishing boat behind his government-supplied vehicle, to the consternation of his boss, and he'd mostly rather be fishing (catch and release, mostly). His hair is a bit longer than most cops, and he's basically pretty laid back, although his success rate is second to none in solving crimes.
It's hard to feel any animosity against most of the criminals. Even the murderers may not seem so bad in many ways; sometimes, their intentions are noble, but they make mistakes and hey, they murder people, which is not a good thing.
The stories remind me a bit of the TV series Justified, which I liked a lot, except the bad guys in this series are not as dumb as some of the ones in Justified, and it's not as humorous.
The story here is complex and interesting. I had no idea what was going on until it was revealed near the end, where we find that more or less nobody is what they seem to be.
I like that the lines are not so sharp between good and evil. Virgil, the cop, doesn't like using a gun, wears t-shirts from obscure bands, and doesn't draw such sharp lines between right and wrong, legal and illegal, etc, as some cops. He's more interested in justice, not punishing people for mistakes or petty crimes, many of which he knows about personally.
He never really wanted to be a cop. His degree was in environmental science, but there's not much demand for that. He likes to write nature articles for magazines, he sometimes toes a fishing boat behind his government-supplied vehicle, to the consternation of his boss, and he'd mostly rather be fishing (catch and release, mostly). His hair is a bit longer than most cops, and he's basically pretty laid back, although his success rate is second to none in solving crimes.
It's hard to feel any animosity against most of the criminals. Even the murderers may not seem so bad in many ways; sometimes, their intentions are noble, but they make mistakes and hey, they murder people, which is not a good thing.
The stories remind me a bit of the TV series Justified, which I liked a lot, except the bad guys in this series are not as dumb as some of the ones in Justified, and it's not as humorous.