HEAT LIGHTNING

Sometimes it seems like Virgil Flowers’s biggest decision is which T-shirt to put on to confound or irritate the people he meets. Though he may look like a Woodstock throwback, Flowers is a top-notch investigator who’s been spun off from Sandford's Lucas Davenport series. In this second outing, Flowers is investigating a perplexing series of torture murders that end with the victim's mouth being stuffed with a lemon wedge. Eric Conger's laid-back depiction of Flowers makes him seem like a modern-day Bret Maverick. Seemingly without effort, he always manages to do the right thing. Conger's tempo keeps the listener in suspense right up to the unorthodox ending—which contains the only appearance of the weather phenomenon for which the book is named. M.S. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2008]