Status
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Description
Don Winslow worked as a Los Angeles arson investigator for more than 15 years. He has also been a private investigator in Europe and America. Drawing on his extensive experience, Winslow has penned a searing novel fueled by international intrigue and murder. Once, Jack Wade was one of the best fire inspectors in the Orange County sheriff's department. Now he's an arson investigator for California Fire and Life. He lives by one rule: never let a case get personal. But when he sees the photograph of the dead woman in the ocean side mansion, he is pulled into a case that becomes very personal-and dangerous. Jack's investigation will take him from the burn marks on the floor to the highest levels of power in the insurance industry. As the evidence stacks up, Jack begins to feel the heat of a ruthless, multi-million dollar scam.… (more)
User reviews
A great thriller and if you have a chance to hear the narrated version, don't hesitate.
Jack is a really competent arson investigator., but one with a checkered past. He's sent by his boss to check out a fire that killed a woman. It appears to be a simple case of accidental death. Soon Jack is mixed up in something that's way over his head and that he didn't see coming at all. (Neither did I.) But Jack has a sense of wanting to do things right.
Winslow writes great scenes. There's one love-making scene that's really erotic and another involving an attempted run-off-the-road that's very well done. One of the bad guys gets very well done, too. With just the right touch of humor.
One quibble. He says at one point, "Heated gas is lighter than air so it rises—witness your Goodyear blimp." Not an accurate example; a hot-air balloon perhaps, but the blimps have helium which is lighter than air.
I disliked all of the technical mumbo jumbo about arson investigation and insurance companies and
In a strange sort of "coincidence", Chapter 23 actually happened TO me when I was in college- in Southern California, Orange County, if memory serves! I guess it was/is a common insurance scam!