Heat Lightning by John Stanford

This is book two in the Virgil Flowers series.

The premise of the book is, Virgil Flowers is only in his late thirties, but he's been around the block a few times, and he doesn't think much can surprise him anymore. He's wrong. "It's a hot, humid summer night in Minnesota, and Flowers is in bed with one of his ex-wives (the second one, if you're keeping count), when the phone rings. It's Lucas Davenport. ‘There's a body in Stillwater, two shots to the head, found near a veteran's memorial. And the victim has a lemon in his mouth. Exactly like the body they found last week.’” The more Flowers works the murders, the more convinced he is that someone's keeping a list, and that the list could have a lot more names on it. If he could only find out what connects them all . . . and then he does, and he's almost sorry he did. Because if it's true, then this whole thing leads down a lot more trails than he thought - and every one of them is booby-trapped.

The wry humor, no-nonsense approach Virgil takes to solving these murders is refreshing. Virgil loves a pretty ass, he likes his hard rock/alternative rock t-shirts, and he thinks outside of the box. I like his character.  It's unconventional, rough around the edges, yet he's not without compassion.

There is also a local appeal to these books - this one starts out with Virgil flying down I94 to I646 to Hwy 36 into Stillwater, MN.  I know these roads, I know were the first scene is set, and it just makes the book more vivid.  It would be similar if a book was set in your City and you could drive the streets with the character.

The problem I had with this book was the murderer was too obvious. I figured out the who-done-it the first quarter of the book, then I had to patiently wait (which is not easy with an audio book) as Virgil worked through everything. I also found the ending to be non-original. Recall book one? Big firefight out in the middle of the prairie? Yup. Big firefight at the end here too – except out in the middle of the woods. A chase scene would have been cool. Still, not enough to dissuade me from reading the next one.