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yevolem 's review for:
Holy Ghost
by John Sandford
This was better than the last few Flowers books. From what I read, Sandford took to heart that the Flowers series was going astray and this book was a successful course correction. The book isn't one of the best in the series, but it's making its way back towards there. Unlike almost any of the Flowers or Davenport books, the reader doesn't have the slightest idea about who was committing the murders until relatively near the end. I'm conflicted about that because the criminal viewpoint often added a lot to the narrative.
Flowers is assigned to a case of two sniper shootings, both victims were injured but survived, that's an hour away from where he lived. It's a small town with population in the several hundreds that reminded me somewhat of a village I lived in that only had a couple hundred people and no longer formally exists. I know that it's a small, rural, town but at points it felt like a time warp to a couple decades earlier at least rather than 2018. There were statements like "show me how that computer thingy works", treating Wi-Fi like something that exists in the air, printing emails multiple times because of a lack of a thumb drive, having no idea how cloud storage works, and seemingly not having a smart phone. Maybe I'm overstating it, but I felt like it was quite the contrast to the recent Davenport books.
Fortunately, Flowers was competent in this one, though his superior said he wasn't at all and it wasn't quite clear if it was a joke. Instead of fumbling around the entire time they do a proper investigation and have interesting ideas on how to progress the case. There wasn't anything that I disliked in the book, but I'm not rating it higher because it just felt like it was missing something other than the the criminal perspective and wasn't as engaging as it should've been.
Unlike the Davenport entry that precedes this one, Trump is explicitly mentioned. There's also a group of Nazi LARPers that has a somewhat sympathetic portrayal, with an emphasis on the pathetic. There's also a major theft of LEGOs. Potpies, chicken especially, featured prominently. There were 37 mentions of them and several characters were frequently eating them and one character was described as a potpie pusher. One other common thing was children. Davenport has four children from three women, though one was adopted. Frankie, the woman that Flowers is involved with, has seven children from six men. I don't recall reading many books where the protagonists had so many children, whether biological or not.
Rating: 3.5/5
Flowers is assigned to a case of two sniper shootings, both victims were injured but survived, that's an hour away from where he lived. It's a small town with population in the several hundreds that reminded me somewhat of a village I lived in that only had a couple hundred people and no longer formally exists. I know that it's a small, rural, town but at points it felt like a time warp to a couple decades earlier at least rather than 2018. There were statements like "show me how that computer thingy works", treating Wi-Fi like something that exists in the air, printing emails multiple times because of a lack of a thumb drive, having no idea how cloud storage works, and seemingly not having a smart phone. Maybe I'm overstating it, but I felt like it was quite the contrast to the recent Davenport books.
Fortunately, Flowers was competent in this one, though his superior said he wasn't at all and it wasn't quite clear if it was a joke. Instead of fumbling around the entire time they do a proper investigation and have interesting ideas on how to progress the case. There wasn't anything that I disliked in the book, but I'm not rating it higher because it just felt like it was missing something other than the the criminal perspective and wasn't as engaging as it should've been.
Unlike the Davenport entry that precedes this one, Trump is explicitly mentioned. There's also a group of Nazi LARPers that has a somewhat sympathetic portrayal, with an emphasis on the pathetic. There's also a major theft of LEGOs. Potpies, chicken especially, featured prominently. There were 37 mentions of them and several characters were frequently eating them and one character was described as a potpie pusher. One other common thing was children. Davenport has four children from three women, though one was adopted. Frankie, the woman that Flowers is involved with, has seven children from six men. I don't recall reading many books where the protagonists had so many children, whether biological or not.
Rating: 3.5/5