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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Review of Mad River

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Mad River:

Another enjoyable audio listen, this time read by Eric Conger. This book is part of the Virgil Flowers series by Sandford. Flowers is a BCA (Bureau of Criminal Apprehension - weird name for a state police agency if there ever was one) agent working under Lucas Davenport who makes several cameo appearances. This is not an investigatory police procedural. The story alternatives between Flowers and the killers' narratives. There's never any doubt who's guilty, the only mystery being their ultimate motivation for the first killing. Mostly it's the chase of three dysfunctional kids who go on a rampage following a simplistic contract killing. They are totally sociopathic and embark on an unintentional (soon becoming otherwise) killing spree.

As the killing intensifies and the killers remain at large, the tension escalates into a conflict between Virgil and the local cops as to how best to deal with the miscreants. That provided one of the subtexts that I found interesting: the desire of the community for immediate vengeance, and Flowers's obsession with discovering whether Jimmy had been hired to kill Agatha.

I think I prefer the Flower series to the Davenport. Flowers just seems to be a more interesting and introspective than Lucas who often strikes me as superficial.

4 comments:

cathyc said...

Hi Eric. I wonder if you might consider writing a general post about audio books. For example, does it take practice to be able to use them properly? I can imagine drifting about, losing the plot all the time.

Welch's Rarebits said...

Sorry for the delay. I finally got around to writing my thoughts on audiobooks. I have no idea what "properly" might be, however. They are whatever you want them to be, and for you whatever works, is proper.

Welch's Rarebits said...

http://rarebits.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-few-musings-on-audiobooks.html

Welch's Rarebits said...

Cathy: my apologies. I did not recognize you as NGE from Goodreads, one of my favorite reviewers.