Be Cool by Elmore Leonard

I started on book #2 of this Chili Palmer series, series = two books. I'm honestly not sure how I liked this book. I was interested but I couldn't just get into it.

Chili is a former wiseguy who got relatively big with the movie Get Leo and bombed with the follow up Get Lost. He starts out meeting with his friend Tommy Athens, a record producer, who ends up with a bullet in the head as Chili is the witness.

Enter Linda Moon, a woman from a dating site whom Chili decides needs to be the star of his next film. Moon is really a musician and, through a series of events, Chili ends up as her manager. All the while, there's Raji (Moon's former manager and a stereotypical pimp) and Elliott (Raji's Samoan gay bodyguard who wants to make it in Hollywood) who want pretty much everyone dead and can't seem to decide who to kill.

Chili cleans up the record company of Tommy's, gets music made, gets people shot, tries to manipulate real-life events so he can have scenes in his movie and starts having sex with HIS manager. And WTF.

I honestly didn't like any character in this book except for Elaine. But I felt I needed to see where it ended. And it ended Meh.

Holy Ghost by John Sandford

The 11th book in the Fuckin' Flowers series. Virgil is right up there with Lucas on my favorite character list. And Sandford is one of my favorite, will-never-miss-a-book authors.

It could be the sinus infection, but even near the end, I couldn't figure out what Flowers knew. Jenkins and Shrake popped in for a bit and even they were at a loss until they got the whole crazy scheme from Flowers. When we finally were told, I was...skeptical. I think I wanted to end this on a grander scale, for all the legwork and dead ends that had happened.

We first have some schemers, including the mayor, who wanted to bring more money back into Wheatfield. So they scared up a Virgin Mary sighting in their church. Lo and behold, all the religious goobers came flocking to Wheatfield to see the Virgin. Coincidentally, the Mayor (Holland) and his genius sidekick (Skinner), bought up some storefront to sell Eats and Souvenirs of the Virgin. They are making a bankload of money when a sniper shows up.

Holland calls in Flowers to find the sniper before he kills someone. So far, sniper has had bad aim and is just wounding people, but he gets lucky soon enough. Weirdly enough, we never got perspective from the sniper's point of view, which we normally get. This was a strict POV of Flowers trying to catch the sniper.

So many dead ends, so much confusion. Even when Flowers figured it out, without telling us, I was still confused. His explanation and the motive seemed a bit weak, but I'll admit I still loved the book. Flowers doesn't need to be in mortal danger every book and this was a definite whodunit.