Dark of the Moon

Dark of the Moon is a new book by John Sandford, author of the great Lucas Davenport series. Sandford uses a co-author in this novel that features Virgil Flowers, a cop working with the Bureau of Criminal Aprehension where he is assigned the hardest cases. Flowers has been divorced a lot, is somewhat afraid of guns, and takes pride in wearing quirky t-shirts. The book opens as he is traveling south to investigate the murder of a harmless ederly couple when he drives upon a house being devoured by flames. The house was set on fire to cover up the murder of the ederly, feeble and hated Bill Judd. Virgil teams with Jim Stryker, an old buddy and the current sherriff, and they start investigating the crimes. A lot is going on in this novel. Stanford throws a lot at the reader.

Dark of the Moon reads just like a Lucas Davenport book. Incredible plotting, tons of characters in the small town, you get to know the town and the feeling that everyone DOES know everyone else. Virgil is a funny guy, all Sandford books have an underlying humor to them. You can tell Sandford is having fun when he writes.

Flowers hooks up with Stryker's sister Joan and has a good time with her, while at the same time wondering if Joan or Jim could be the killer. In fact, everyone Flowers encounters has a motive or a reason to be a killer. Sandford fans will love this book. It is fast pace and full of twists. Flowers' wit always keeps you entertained as well.

With a new Davenport book due in the spring, fans of the author won't have long to wait for another great book. Hopefully, Sandford can continue to write novels featuring Flowers as well.

Virgil Flowers who is working for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is sent to Bluestem for some investigative work. Virgil's boss, Lucas Davenport the protagonist of Sandford's PREY series only gives Virgil "the hard stuff". Bluestem has some "hard stuff" going on. There's more than one secret, more than one scam, more than one strange character, and maybe more than one killer in the small town. It's hard to know who to trust when every one knows everyone's business.

The first third of the book was very compelling. I was instantly drawn into the story. I loved the character of Virgil Flowers. The storyline was suspenseful. I would give that part of the book 5 stars. After the storyline is set up and the characters are introduced the book runs into problems. The story just started dragging. There were not only too many subplots and tangents, there were way too many characters. A big problem for me, though I liked Flowers a lot, I absolutely did not care about any of the secondary characters. There was so little time in developing them how could you really care. By the last quarter of the book, I couldn't wait for it to end. It was a major disappointment. I do hope Sandford uses Virgil Flowers again as a main character, but next time I hope he tightens up the storyline, make a bit more plausible, use less characters, and make us care about more than one of them.

First, this is not another installment in the "Prey" series that features Lucas Davenport, one of the most fully developed characters in modern fiction. Second, this may be only partially the product of John Sandford. The Acknowledgment states the novel "was written in cooperation wsith my friend Larry Millett . . ." Sounds like Sandford got more than just an idea or advance reading from Sandford. If indeed Sandford has taken on a co-author, he should have the decency to tell us so forthrightly.

Virgil Flowers, a secondary character in recent Prey novels goes solo in this one. He still works for the Minnesota BCA and Lucas Davenport is his boss. But we read very litle of Lucas here and the interchange between the characters is practically non-existent.

So Flowers, the perpetual I'll-do-it-my-way guy is in Bluestem Minnesota helping out his old buddy, Sheriff Jim Stryker, find a murderer who has burned an old man to death and killed another elderly couple, shooting out the eyes of the husband.

Everyone is a suspect. The son of the old man, who happens to be the area's most hated multi-millionaire; the local newspaper editor; the Sheriff's sister (whom Flowers beds without adding to the story); the illegitimate daughter of the dead millionaire who suddenly proclaims her presence and entitlement to a chunk of the expected inheritance; a born-again Christian who used to be a criminal and maybe still is; a father-son brace of deputies who might be murderers and few others. In all, there are about a dozen primary characters, each of whom may be the murderer. Flowers, working almost alone, has to figure out who the bad guy (or gal) is.

In all, it's a good, kind of old-fashioned "whodunit". It's definitely a change from the "Prey" series. The writing is excellent, but different than what I've come to expect from Sandford. The editing, on the other hand, sucks. A couple of times, you have to reread to figure out which character is speaking. In one instance, a couple is referred to as having children - a supposed fact that is contradicted later in the book.

As a character, Flowers lacks the believability of Lucas Davenport. But it took at least a couple of "Prey" novels before Davenport started shaping up and Flowers is definitely off to a good start.

The ending is a bit of a disppointment and because I don't like "spoilers", I'm not going to tell you why. It isn't much of a disappointment, but the close reader will see what I am talking about.

On the whole, this is a good mystery, different in many subtle ways from the "Prey" series. But if you had never read a "Prey" novel, you wouldn't know the differences. Virgil Flowers is off to a good start as a character and I hope the we'll see more of him as a solo character in the future. By the same token, if Sandford has taken to using a co-author, I hope he has the decency to tell us so and to give the co-author proper credit. And I hope as well that we'll continue to see Lucas Davenport in more "Prey" novels. Davenport is still, by far, the more interesting character.

Jerry

I have a feeling that, with a couple more books, Virgil Flowers will be as much a favorite character of mine as is Sandford's inimitable Lucas Davenport. Flowers has angles to be examined and depths to be explored, and I will welcome the opportunity in future books. The overall story here is a real whodunnit, a genuine mystery. Flowers' investigative methods differ greatly from Davenport's, so Sandford and his co-author didn't merely recreate Lucas in a younger, hipper, more laid-back persona. Flowers is definitely...different. I liked the story and the action and the overall story arc, and I always like the black and often sexual humor that permeates a Sandford story. I think this is a fine beginning to what promises to be a series that will stand cover-to-cover on my shelves with the Davenport series. However, I am irritated -- no, in past Sandford books I was irritated; now I am well and truly outraged, incensed, totally ticked off! by the number of typos and proofing errors. I'm NOT talking about those intentional errors contained within Flowers' fictional writing. I'm talking about the flow of the story, where spelling errors and missing words yank me from the suspension of my disbelief. The last straw was (and by then it had happened often enough that I almost threw the book across the room) on page 350 (hardback copy) when reference was made to the "Diary Queen." No, they sell ice cream at the DAIRY Queen. Hey, Publisher! Hey, Editor! Hey, Author! Spell-check won't catch those kinds of errors, and they have been a constant throughout the Sandford books. So, please, Putnam, please, lay out a few bucks for a really GOOD proofreader for future books. PLEASE! Sandford's work deserves the best.

Very little about this book rang true for me. The main character had little depth, even though I have been introduced to him in another Sandford book. As other readers commented, the editing was poorly executed: two Curleys speak in one scene even though only one has been established and the time frame re: Flower's morning exercises/running is truncated. A white dog wanders into one scene, never to be seen again. Plus, the Lucas Davenport and Sandy 'the researcher' (as we are constantly reminded) references never worked. The way they were handled, the two characters might have been from Mars and not from Sandford's previous novels.

The above could have been somewhat overlooked if the plot and story worked....which they did not. There were many setups but few satisfying payoffs. And the third act never paid off at all: why had the killer blown out the eyes of his victims? Yeah, he was a nut, but that in and of itself is no excuse for poor writing. And the love interest's explaination at the end was so contrived it wasn't worth reading twice to see if it made any sense.

Many authors develop a franchise that they later 'hand off' to co-writers, sometimes with good results, other times not. This seems to be one of the nots. The next time I purchase a John Sandford novel, I will definitely make sure that it was written by Sandford and only Sandford.