California Fire and Life by
Don Winslow
pbk out July 99
(Century)
at £10
Jack Wade lives for two things. Fire and surfing. He's a fire investigator for a large insurance company, and he's the best at what he does. He can read a fire like most people read a newspaper, and when Pamela Vale dies surrounded by millions of dollars of antiques and her husband doesn't even shed a tear, Jack knows the story isn't accidental death.
But nobody else is listening to the fire's message. Told to back off by his bosses, hassled by the cops, Jack keeps on keeping on, gradually uncovering
a twisted tale of fraud and murder whose taint stretches far beyond Pamela Vale. And along the way, Jack learns the very hard way that there is more
to life than the next fire or the next wave.
Written in a spare, tense prose that calls to mind the Beat poets, this is a novel that brings Raymond Chandler's corruption in the sunshine state
bang up to date. Atmospheric and emotionally charged, it's the crime fiction equivalent of that brilliant Guinness commercial with the surf and
the horses. I loved it.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
California Fire and Life by
Don Winslow