The title, prologue and opening pages of this novel leave no doubt that it is primarily concerned with violent fires. By page three, three people have been horrifically burnt to death in two different instant fires, one in Boston and one in Washington D.C.
The fact that one of the people burnt was the mother of Kerry Murphy has led her to become an arson investigator. Some of her brilliance at this comes from the fact that her experience of being unable to save her mother's life has left her with the ability to foresee a fire shortly before it takes place. She can also get into the mind of the arsonist, one in particular, as she has a special psychic talent which is triggered by fire. She is enlisted by a group of fire fighters, one with similar talents, to track down Trask, a pyromaniac psychopath who is responsible for many of the fires. He is bent on creating a radio-transmitted method of spontaneous combustion with a large enough transmitter to destroy a city the size of Atlanta in two hours. This started as a government project which was scrapped because of its frightening potential, but Trask had enough know-how to carry on with his own experiments. He has the idea of eventually selling it to a foreign power but in the meantime he is using it as a weapon against anyone in government or in any other area who tries to frustrate him.
Brad Silver is a controller in the group tracking down Trask, and his step-brother was one of the victims killed in Washington. He also has psychic powers which, like Kerry's, came as the result of a lengthy coma.
There are descriptions of a considerable number of intense fires with particularly gruesome deaths and some information about Trask's previous life. As the contest between Kerry and Trask develops, there are telephone conversations between the two when he tries to establish a connection and similarity in character between himself and his female opponent. It makes an interesting read, at times frighteningly violent, but introducing a mind-reading dimension that it seems possible could exist in certain circumstances. It finishes with a confrontation between Kerry and Trask in which Kerry learns a lot about her early life and what really happened in the fire in Boston.
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Rosemary Brown