Yeah, Prachett doesn't have any particularly special love for Vimes, which comes off in his memoirs. However, he was extremely good at tapping into the "Good Cop" psyche, and the reason Guards! Guards! is one of his best books, is because it is the first one in the Discworld series that really buckled down on fleashing out Ankt-Morpork as a real breathing city, not just a fantasy foil for Rincewinds stories to begin, and Vimes is absolutely the best narrator to tell that story.

It definitely is the one that really put him on the map.