This is my kind of story, reminiscent of Fredrik Backman’s quirky characters in down-on-their luck communities, or the true-grit folks you might have seen years ago on the television show Northern Exposure. While Virgil is the eponymous hero of this novel, Enger offers us plenty of other characters to love in this small Midwestern town. As promised in the publisher’s notes, this is truly a place where captivating whimsy is the order of the day. A perfect summer read.
Dr. Vandiver's series of lectures on the Aeneid is wonderful. She not only gets you to want to reread it, but her love and passion for the subject matter are great. She looks at the historical context as well the literary devices that are used. She is wonderful.
I still say that John Sandford was trolling his readers with the first book in his series. He took all of the complaints of the Lucas Davenport series and just went to level 10 with everything. Lucas was a man that no man can say no to, Virgil rolls into town and gets a woman interested in him in like 5 minutes. Lucas does things out of bounds, well Virgil just goes and works around local law enforcement until he needs them as well and oh in one case several people get shot up and I don't even know what was happening at this point. This first book was a waste of time.
"Dark of the Moon" follows Virgil Flowers who was introduced in the Lucas Davenport series. We know that Virgil has been married three times and this book pretty much delves into how stupid Virgil is when it comes to women. Poor guy, he's unable to just be a professional without noting how hot or not hot some woman is. Blech.
Anyway, "Dark of the Moon" has Virgil called in on a case involving a man and woman who were murdered in the home in the town of Bluestem. Virgil is called in due to the way that the dead man was posed. On his way to the town, he stops when he sees a local rich man's house on fire. Virgil is quickly involved in both cases and wonders if something ties them together. This being a Sandford book of course something ties them together. Something stupid, but something does. We also have Virgil get involved with someone and lord that whole thing just made me tired. I already updated you all on how they watched her brother (the local sheriff) have sex and I just want to put that mess out of my mind. This book almost broke me. Almost.
Virgil is not worth me talking about besides his whole thing when he's trying to write the case as a mystery novelist made me laugh and laugh. He's a terrible writer. His reasoning skills are up there with Lucas. They just seem to come to conclusions about things and they are always right.
The other characters were barely developed. It was hard to keep everyone straight because the two cases tie back to something else and to the rich guy who was also a secret sex addict. Let's just say something happened way back when tied back to something and somehow the word moon got thrown in.
The writing was early Sandford and the flow was awful. The book felt endless after a while.
The ending made me sigh because per early Sandford, we find out about a character (something unsavory) but Sandford via his character just let's it go. I was bored and annoyed the entire time while reading this.
The plot holes and terrible mystery were not helped by the ridiculous characters. I hated every single reference to sex. Sandford writes most of the women as sex crazed and Flowers as a blonde version of Lucas Davenport. Flowers attempting to write a novel was hilariously awful and made zero sense. This whole book made zero sense.
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