Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | FICTION EME | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Earl Emerson is the poet laureate of men and women who make their living where the heat is, bringing to life the terror of a burning building and the moments of solitude, solace, and camaraderie that happen in between. Now, Emerson has written a mesmerizing novel of suspense about a man who goes into a fire as a hero and a friend, and comes out as an outcast--and a target.
VERTICAL BURN
Twenty-eight paces . John Finney counted his steps as he fought his way for help from inside a Seattle warehouse burning on Leary Way. And when he reached his rescuers, he told them where his partner lay waiting--twenty-eight paces away. But they didn't reach Finney's partner until the building had cooled.
Now, six months after that tragic day, no one remembers Finney giving the directions that pinpointed his partner's position. No one can remember anything about Finney except that he left his friend to die. For Finney, the son of a fire chief, losing his reputation and the trust of his fellow firefighters is a bitter blow. But Finney doesn't believe the fire was an accident. And he doesn't believe the campaign against him is one either.
Trying to reconstruct the events at Leary Way, Finney uncovers suspicious actions by men at the scene. With only one person on his side--a female firefighter who is herself an outcast in the department--Finney begins to piece together an astounding conspiracy that will turn friends into suspects, good men into conspirators, and every man inside the department into a potentially deadly enemy. And the most horrific fire is yet to burn.
From the terrifying darkness of a smoke-engulfed room to the politics that plays out behind closed doors, Earl Emerson captures with passion and pathos the life and times of the men and women dedicated to the service. In Vertical Burn he fuses his feeling for real-life heroes with a white-hot tale of suspense and betrayal-- the kind of betrayal that burns bodies, burns a city, and burns a soul forever.
Author Notes
Earl Emerson was born July 8, 1948 in Tacoma, Washington. He is the author of the very popular Mac Fontana series as well as the Thomas Black detective series. He won the Shamus Award in 1985 for Poverty Bay, his second novel in the Thomas Black series. He was again nominated for a Shamus for his novel The Vanishing Smile in 1996 (another in the Thomas Black series).
Emerson's writing is described as vivid with witty dialog and complex but impeccably credible plots. Emerson remains a lieutenant with the Seattle Fire Department (his Mac Fontana character is a small town fire chief) and lives in North Bend, Washington.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Seattle fireman Emerson, of Shamus Award$winning Thomas Black detective series fame, returns with his 12th novel"a tale of arson, intrigue and sublimated rivalries among Seattle firefighters. John Finney, son of a retired fire chief and brother of a 21-year veteran, is haunted by the fire that killed one of his colleagues and placed him under departmental suspicion. Finney thinks the fire was arson, but can't prove it"until two other fires erupt under even more suspicious circumstances, killing another one of his partners. In short order, the mistrust of Finney's colleagues flares dangerously close to criminal prosecution, while a mysterious rogue fire engine tries to run him down. Finney starts up his own investigation of the fires, and even manages to spark up a romance with Diana Moore, the department's only female firefighter. But when Finney's amateur sleuthing turns up a crooked business tycoon and an arson insurance scam involving Seattle's tallest tower, Emerson turns up the heat. The novel is, as expected, long on details of firefighting and its incipient hazards, though there is little mention of the real and enduring conflicts between the investigative arm of firefighters and law enforcement. Newcomers to Emerson's work who enjoy thrillers like Suzanne Chazin's The Fourth Angel should find little to complain about; as an example of the genre, however, in plotting and dialogue ( I ain't seen nothing but this goddamn smoke. Thought maybe my first wife was in there cooking dinner. ) this is at best a two-alarmer. Major ad/promo; 10-city author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
One day, life is dandy for John Finney, who, like the author, is a veteran of Seattle's fire department. The next day he loses his friend and partner in a fire he suspects was set, and shortly after that he is being framed for arson and targeted for murder by conspirators who are planning to burn down the city's tallest building. Nobody can dig a hole for his protagonists any faster or deeper than Emerson, whose two series--starring private eye Thomas Black and firefighter-detective Mac Fontana, respectively--both feature heroes with enough moxie to extricate themselves in ingenious ways from whatever pit into which they are thrown. Here Emerson combines an intimate knowledge of fires and fire fighting with an intricate plot played out by characters you can love or hate. It's a thriller that delivers on thrills. --Dennis Dodge
Kirkus Review
Time was when veteran Seattle firefighter John Finney was unequivocal about his feelings for his job. He loved climbing on Engine 10, loved the ever-dependable rush he got from anticipated danger. He prided himself on being a natural, the way his father had been before him. All that changes, though, inside the building on Leary Way. At first glance, the blaze appears no more menacing than thousands of others Finney has fought. The fire, while fierce, seems readily manageable-until Finney and Captain Cordifis go in and are suddenly engulfed. A sound like a gunshot tells them walls are collapsing, one of them half-burying Captain Cordifis. Barely functional, staggered by smoke inhalation, Finney knows he has to find help, and he feels certain before losing consciousness that he's succeeded. Yet somehow Captain Cordifis isn't rescued. What went wrong? Finney asks himself obsessively in a painful aftermath that sends his career to the ashes. It takes hard sleuthing, but by following the money he eventually uncovers an ugly conspiracy of fire department people in high places, ruthless people intent on discrediting him and his investigation. Soon enough, however, he realizes the conspirators have focused on a new objective: to silence him any way they can. Emerson, himself an experienced firefighter, is a veteran storyteller as well (Catfish Cafe, 1998, etc.). His charismatic protagonist is both believable and admirable, and if he's also a tiny bit predictable, no matter: you'll root for him anyway.
Library Journal Review
Emerson's 24 years as a Seattle firefighter and the assurance gained from writing 11 previous novels merge into a complex tale of smoke, flame, and murder. After John Finney, a second-generation Seattle fireman, leaves his injured partner in a smoke-filled warehouse to seek help, he finds himself suspected of cowardice. When he believes he has uncovered a large-scale internal plot to divert the city's 200 firefighters to various false alarms in order to torch a major skyscraper, even his crew mate doubts his sanity. Emerson vividly portrays the physical hardships of racing fire and heat while encased in cumbersome protective garments and carrying 50 pounds of gear. He develops both male and female characters well, writes with assurance, and skillfully juggles a complicated plot. This departure from his previous two series, one centering on Seattle P.I. Thomas Black (Million-Dollar Tattoo) and the other featuring arson investigator Mac Fontana (Morons and Madmen), should appeal to anyone wanting a good mystery plus a painless inhalation of a great deal of firefighting lore. Recommended for public and academic fiction/suspense collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/02.] Roland Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
I WAKE UP SCREAMING When the lights came on, John Finney found himself admiring the arch of Diana's lower back through her ribbed undershirt, adjusting her supple thigh muscles as she swung her legs over the edge of the bunk, and the way two hours of sleep had frizzed her chestnut hair. Her back was to him as she stepped into her boots and pulled her pants up over blue silk running shorts. It was 0304 hours, June 9. On their way out of the bunk room they passed evidence of Engine 10's earlier departure: twisted blankets, pillows darkened with swirlies of drool, a set of reading glasses askew on a Fire Engineering magazine. Finney always turned his pillow over when they got a run in the middle of the night. He reached the hole just as Moore grabbed for the thick brass pole. In a voice husky with sleep and as rough-edged as Rod Stewart's, she said, "I guess this is the most dangerous thing we'll do all night, huh?" "It's a long drop," he joked. She wrapped herself expertly around the pole and vanished. They'd been bantering back and forth all evening, flirting really, and she was teasing him for warning her about the long drop at Station 10. Finney cautioned everyone. Two years earlier a sleep-addled firefighter let go of the pole ten feet too soon and woke up screaming. By the time the bearlike captain lumbered around the front of the rig and climbed into the high cab, Finney had fired up Ladder 1's diesel engine and turned on the department radio. Reidel, the tillerman, checked in through Finney's headset. "Ready to rock 'n' roll, boss." Reidel kept at his fingertips an ample supply of the worst action movie lines. Finney grinned. "How the hell could we possibly be the first-in truck all the way out on Leary Way?" asked Captain Cordifis. "I don't know," Finney said. But it had surprised him, too. There were thirty-three engine companies and eleven aerial truck companies in Seattle, and at least five of those truck companies should have been dispatched ahead of them. As they traveled north through downtown on Third Avenue, the electronic whoop of the siren reverberated off the tall buildings. Finney heard the familiar clinking of the alarm bells on the MSA air masks Moore and Baxter were donning in the crew cab behind him. Then, from the east shore of Lake Union on Westlake, he saw smoke in the northern sky. Lots of smoke. They had a good one. This was what Finney was bred for, fighting fires. He glanced at Cordifis, who was putting a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. Bill Cordifis had been to the Ozark Hotel fire, where they lost twenty-one civilians. He'd been at the Villa Plaza apartments, where eight hours of fire burned more than two hundred people out of their homes. He'd seen a woman jump six hundred feet off the Space Needle. Smoke in the sky didn't bother Cordifis any more than it bothered Finney. Engine 22's radio report came over the air. "Engine Twenty-two at Leary Way Northwest and Eight Avenue Northwest. We have a three-story warehouse approximately seventy by fifty. Constructed of tilt-up concrete. Heavy black smoke coming from the rear of the building. Engine Twenty-two laying a preconnect and establishing Leary Command." Captain Vaughn was riding Engine 22 tonight, and if Cordifis didn't take command from him, he would be the Incident Commander until a chief showed up. The building was set back from the north side of Leary Way, a couple of blocks north of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in a neighborhood that was evenly divided between residential and commercial properties. When they got close, the smoke in the street forced Finney to slow to a crawl. He didn't want to run over anybody. Then the wind shifted, and it became clear that Vaughn had under- estimated the size of the building by at least half. In front were several moving vans parked close enough to the loading dock that radiant heat would ignite them should the fire grow worse. But it wasn't going to grow worse. They would go inside and put it out just like they always did. Excerpted from Vertical Burn by Earl Emerson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
