{"id":11160,"date":"2024-09-09T08:03:05","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T12:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11160"},"modified":"2024-09-09T08:03:05","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T12:03:05","slug":"imaginations-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11160","title":{"rendered":"Imaginations on Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As news of the Southern California Line Fire explodes, another in a long line of catastrophes, authors have taken note. Fire\u2019s destructiveness reveals heroism, and can equally well hide dastardly deeds. These thrillers have some strong points, and I also recommend the nonfiction Fire Weather<\/em> by John Vaillant<\/a>. You\u2019ll discover real-life heroes (and villains) and understand fire\u2019s dangers much better.<\/p>\n\n\n

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What Fire Brings<\/em><\/a>
From the first pages of Rachel Howzell Hall\u2019s new psychological thriller, What Fire Brings<\/em>, Bailey Meadows\u2019s situation is fraught with deception. This young Black woman has finagled a writing internship with noted thriller author Jack Beckham, but she isn\u2019t a writer. She\u2019s secretly working toward obtaining her private investigator\u2019s license, and wants to use this opportunity to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared near Beckham\u2019s Topanga Canyon property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Topanga is a famously bohemian community west of Los Angeles whose hilly terrain and dense tree cover make it seem remote and wild. Thanks to Hall\u2019s deft descriptions, the Canyon, with its one road in and one road out, becomes another potentially dangerous character here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story is told entirely from Bailey\u2019s point of view. If you\u2019ve read other works by Howzell, notably her debut, Land of Shadows<\/em><\/a>, you won\u2019t be surprised her narrative reads as if she is in an existential crisis. Living in two worlds makes her easily distracted\u2014not the best headspace for conducting an investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a hike in the canyon, she sees a fire in the distance\u2014too far away to pose any risk to the Beckham property, or is it? I read an advance reader copy of this book, which was labelled an \u2018uncorrected proof.\u2019 Typos will (presumably) be caught, and other changes may be made. However, when Bailey asks the fire chief about the maximum temperature a human body can tolerate, and he says 250 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, that\u2019s so wrong, I thought it was another intentional deception. The human body is about 60 percent water, which boils at 212 degrees F. Then he says higher temperatures are survivable \u201cif there\u2019s water around.\u201d Water (humidity) actually worsens<\/em> heat\u2019s effects of heat on the body. This apparent slip-up is much more than a cosmetic problem, it affected my understanding of the plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That stumble aside, when you finally understand the whole of Bailey\u2019s predicament, you may, like me, be struck by Hall\u2019s accomplishment here. She turns the tables on some issues I didn\u2019t realize were actually on<\/em> the table. Despite Bailey\u2019s annoying dithering, and the unanswered story questions (like, who was that old lady?), What Fire Brings<\/em> is an exciting and memorable read.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Into the Flames<\/em><\/a>
James Delargy\u2019s incendiary new crime thriller, Into the Flames<\/em>, like his previous two, is set in wildfire-prone rural southeastern Australia. Former Sydney police Detective Alex Kennard is making a heroic effort to reach the hilltop home of a missing artist\u2014Tracy Hilmeyer\u2014on one of the most threatened blocks in the rapidly burning fictional town of Rislake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The superheated road surface pulls away as the tires of his commandeered Personnel Carrier labor up to the Hilmeyer house. Kennard doesn\u2019t expect to find much at the house, certainly not what he does find\u2014Tracy\u2019s dead body, lying in a pool of blood. It takes superhuman cajoling to persuade the firefighters to concentrate on saving this one structure\u2014now a crime scene\u2014and to get the necessary investigating officers up the hill to the endangered dwelling. All the usual trappings of a murder investigation are here\u2014coroner\u2019s reports, paper trails, motor vehicle searches, warrants, interviews, development of suspects\u2014all of which takes place amid an utter catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author Delargy is good at developing a complicated plot, red herrings and all. And, if you like a flat-out adventure, the story moves quickly from one event to the next. His writing style doesn\u2019t lend itself to much character development, and he tends to tell you what his characters are feeling, rather than convey their motivations through more subtler means. As a result, I didn\u2019t become really attached to any of them and to outright dislike a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I did like was the dramatic set-up. The increasing number of devastating real-life wildfires around the world are a growing menace, and a story like this one vividly brings home the kinds of perils that such tragedies pose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order from Amazon here:
What Fire Brings<\/em><\/a>
Into the Flames<\/a><\/em>
As an Amazon Associate, I receive a small payment for books ordered through this site. Thank you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As news of the Southern California Line Fire explodes, another in a long line of catastrophes, authors have taken note. Fire\u2019s destructiveness reveals heroism, and can equally well hide dastardly deeds. These thrillers have some strong points, and I also … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Wildfires produce stories of heroism, tragedy, and the chance to cover a crime. But the operative principle is \"out of control.\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1335,52,54,126,35,32],"tags":[2219,1509,2218,1778],"class_list":["post-11160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-crime","category-detective","category-reading-2","category-real-life","category-thriller","tag-dames-delargy","tag-john-vaillant","tag-rachel-howzell-hall","tag-wildfire"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2U0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11163,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11160\/revisions\/11163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}