storm front

storm front
virgil flowers #7
john sandford
fiction/suspense/mystery
putnam adult
published 2013

In Israel, a man clutching a backpack searches desperately for a boat.  In Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a message from Lucas Davenport:  You're about to get a visitor.  It's an Israeli cop, and she's tailing a man who's smuggled out an extraordinary relic - a copper scroll revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon.

Wait a minute, laughs Virgil.  Is this one of those Da Vinci Code deals?  The secret scroll, the blockbuster revelation, the teams of murderous bad guys?  Should I be boning up on my Bible verses?

He looks at the cop.  She's not laughing.  As it turns out, there are very bad men chasing the relic, and they don't care who's in the way or what they have to do to get it.  Maybe Virgil should start praying.

Sooooo this was not my favorite Virgil Flowers book.  It still had the humor, which I love, but I'm just not into this Israeli, Hezbollah terrorists, religious stuff.  I don't know why.  I like books like The Da Vinci Code, conspiracy laced in religion, but for some reason I just can't get into books like this.

It was still good, just disappointing to me based on the subject matter though I did like the twist at the end.  I was afraid that somehow Sandford overlooked the discrepancies in the beginning, but of course that wasn't true.

There is one more thing that bothered me about this book that also bothered me in the last Virgil book, Mad River.  The ones who got away.  Virgil either knows who they are or flat out arrested them, but they still got away somehow.  It doesn't ft with my just desserts mentality.  It just struck me that maybe this is just another difference being highlighted between Lucas and Virgil.  Lucas will go back and fix it, legal or not, but Virgil will just wait it out.  Sure, it bugs him, but I think he figures they'll get what's coming to them.