Wed 16 Sep 2015
JOHN SANDFORD – Storm Front. G. P. Putnam’s, hardcover, October 2013. Berkley, premium paperback, October 2014.
Some of the reviews of this book on Amazon give it only one star, claiming that Sandford has sold them out, that he had someone else write it for him. This is based on the dedication, which is to Michelle Cook (now his wife) for her help in writing it and that she is now a novelist.
Well, I can understand how other readers might feel about this. Many of them claimed to have noticed the difference in writing style within the first couple of chapters. I’m not at all surprised about this. I looked at the dedications that Sandford included in other books in his Virgil Flowers series — this is the seventh — and in them he thanks any number of other individuals for their help in writing them. What input that Sandford had in any of them remains unknown, but on the basis of the evidence, I’d say perhaps some sort of supervisory capacity, but little more than that.
Virgil Flowers is the only agent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in the southern part of the state, his immediate superior being Lucas Davenport, the leading protagonist of Sandford’s primary series of “Prey” books, each with a two-word titles ending in that word. My sense is that Flowers was a recurring character in those books before he headed off for his own adventures.
What the Object of Interest is in Storm Front is an ancient sacred stele, an artifact stolen from an archaeological dig in Israel and brought to the US by a local (Minnesotan) college professor who is dying of cancer. What makes it so valuable is that the inscriptions on it suggest Solomon, the greatest king of the Jews, may actually have been Egyptian, turning the Middle East into even more of an uproar of religious hatreds.
So all kinds of people are on Professor Jones’s trail as well. Israelis, some of whom may be Mossad agents, Hezbollah agents, Turks, Syrian, all kinds of collectors of curios and other arcane objects, TV personalities, plus a good (and good-looking) friend of Virgil’s named Ma Nobles, who has five or kids with maybe as many fathers, a bountiful bustline, and — even though Virgil is investigating her in regard to some fake antique lumber scheme she is cooking up — an IQ of some 150 or more.
In spite of the controversy mentioned in the first paragraph above, I read the book on its own merits, as I always do. The first 200 pages were fine. Very enjoyable, I thought. Lots of action, lots of sly humor, interesting characters. What are they complaining about?
Unfortunately at 200 pages in, this was only the halfway point. There were still 200 pages left to go. This is the point at which I think the author lost control of the book. The humorous byplay along the way seemed shoved aside to concentrate on the story, which was spinning its wheels, going nowhere fast. The characters, which were so fresh and new in the first half, suddenly began to fade and lose their personality, and they became far less interesting.
What really goes wrong is that there are simply too many characters, and as a reader, I began to feel manipulated when they began to pop up only when they were needed before popping back out again. To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure how the story ended, but without a scorecard, I’d long stopped caring about who the characters were, and what they ended up with.
And at length the story did end, but in a strange anti-climactic finale that I found myself totally indifferent to. This is difficult to say, as it was obviously one the author had in mind all along, but frankly, it just didn’t work for me.
September 16th, 2015 at 9:43 pm
I was late to the party with the “Prey” books, and just started reading the Flowers’ books about a year ago, when I discovered he had branched off to another mystery series. I thought this was the weakest, due to the Dan Brown style plot, but still enjoyed the book. Sandford has an effortless way of appearing to write, sort of like a Westlake or Block book, that just seems to sweep you along. I really enjoyed the other books in the series, which in general kind of meander around with Flowers asking everyone’s opinion and then a lot of excitement at the end. Half of the fun is the byplay between the different characters.
I believe Virgil was a minor character in at least one of the Davenport books before getting his own series, and Ma Nobles seems to be hanging around for at least a book or two.
I will definitely go back and start reading the Prey series to see how it compares to this series.
September 16th, 2015 at 10:31 pm
I probably won’t read any more of the Flowers books — I spent a lot of time with this one, and there are many other authors I want to read and re-read — but if I do, it would be because of the byplay between the characters. It made the first half of the book fun to read, but for me, it dissipated noticeably in the second half.
I’ve checked out the Prey books, and I’ve always passed on them. My impression is that they’re dark, a lot darker than this one, and serial killers just aren’t what I’m ever very much interested in. Maybe I’m wrong abut that.
What caught my eye in what you say, David, is that this is the “weakest” of the Flowers books. Whenever I pick one book in a series at random to read, that seems to happen more often than you’d think it should. If the plot is rather unusual for the series, you’re probably right, but I wonder why it so often happens that way.
September 16th, 2015 at 11:27 pm
This sounds as if Sandford has done like Clive Cussler and others and farmed out his famous name to other writers, only unlike them he still tries to make it seem he wrote the books. The dedication to ghost writers is an old trick. William Shatner dedicated all the Tek series books to Ron Goulart who wrote them for instance.
Many writers do this, Iris Johanson, James Patterson, James Rollins to name a few, and several dead writers like Harold Robbins and Robert Ludlum are still writing this way, but Sandford does seem to be cheating a bit if he has farmed out a franchise as Cussler did with his Issac Bell, Fargo, and Kurt Austin series.
September 16th, 2015 at 11:41 pm
The practice went on even earlier than any of those you mention, David. Think of Leslie Charteris and Ellery Queen, and maybe even before either of them.
September 17th, 2015 at 10:57 am
Charteris, Brett Halliday, at least one Craig Rice, a brand name is a brand name. Jack London bought plot ideas from young Sinclair Lewis.
Alexandre Dumas was a virtual writing factory with a small army doing plots he rewrote.
January 14th, 2022 at 1:08 pm
Not my favorite–not even close…I like Flowers as a character but in this one he is actually boring…up this highway, down that, this intersection, that one, turn right of left…get stumped? call someone to trace a cell phone…Two characters with the same name…blah blah…A lot emphasis on “Ma Nobles'” ta-ta size..hubba hubba…Yipes…
October 1st, 2024 at 3:15 pm
Just finished the audiobook. This is the fourth Virgil Flowers book I’ve listened to. He seems to be incompetent too often for my tastes. My question, however, is about the money. It was confusing because he implied that Elijah’s wife would get the care he’d wanted. Where did that money come from? I thought the 3 million went to Awad and his associate. I tried backtracking, but too exhausting.
Can anyone suggest a good series/author that has detecting, humor, less sex. I love David Rosenfelt, Spencer Collins, the Monk series…books like that. Thanks!
October 1st, 2024 at 6:14 pm
I’m sorry not to be able to answer your question about the money. I remember very little about the book, and I was discouraged enough about it that I never read another by Sandford. Obviously others like him, but he doesn’t write the kind of stories I like to read.
Most of the authors I do read these days falls into the “oldies” category. Books from the 30s and 40s of last century. Many authors from that era would fall, I think, into the kind of mysteries you’re asking about. Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Rex Stout, and so on. Maybe they’re too old for you. I guess I grew up with them, and so they’re ones I remember the most.