Flashover

Outstanding book! I just started reading novels again, and I'm so glad I picked this up. I especially liked learning a lot about real-life situations. I want to read everything Suzanne does and will!

After finishing Suzanne Chazin's first book, The Fourth Angel, I was eager to read more about her unusual heroine, feisty Fire Marshall Georgia Skeehan--and I wasn't disappointed. With Flashover, Chazin creates another page-turning adventure full of surprising twists and turns of plot that paint a vivid and accurate picture of the behind-the-scenes life of a fire fighter and the inner workings of a fire as it builds and spreads. A member of the International Association of Arson Investigators and wife of a New York City fire chief, Chazin clearly knows what she is talking about. Nowhere is this more apparent, or her writing more powerful, than in the opening scene of the first chapter. I don't think one could understand the horror of being the victim of the fire Chazin describes--a living and breathing monster--without actually being there, which is exactly where Chazin places the reader. You won't want to put the book down after that.

I read the 4th Angel strictly because Jeffery Deaver wrote the notes on the cover. After reading that I became a fan of Ms Chazin. In Flashover, The story continues and much like in a Deaver story, Ms. Chazin is a nut for detail... I found this book a pure pleasure to read with all the twist and turns that you would come to expect with a great mystery writer. Flashover stands on it's own and my guess is if you read this one first you will go back and read The 4th Angel.

Flashover was just the kind of book I've been looking for and find too rarely these days. It not only has vivid characters with realistic emotional struggles, it is also full of the kind of careful storytelling and forensic details that make for a great thriller. Georgia Skeehan, a rookie fire marshal with the FDNY and a single mother, is called upon to investigate a Park Avenue apartment blaze in which a doctor is hovering near death. At first, the blaze looks like it was caused by smoking in bed. But quickly, the story takes a more sinister turn when it is revealed that the doctor once worked for the FDNY's pension board and was responsible for turning down firefighters' for line-of-duty pensions. Ms. Chazin writes in a compelling and visual way. Her fires are the scariest scenes I've ever read in a thriller. And the relationship between Georgia and her boyfriend, Marshal Mac Marenko, constitutes one of the best on-going romantic relationships I've seen in a mystery series. Even though firefighters and fire books seem to be everywhere these days, I really knew very little about what it's like to be a New York City firefighter-much less a female firefighter. Ms. Chazin has given me a very timely glimpse into this world, and she's done it in an exciting and compelling way.

Georgia Skeatan was a firefighter before she became a fire marshal. Her supervisor and lover Mac Marenko is having a little commitment problem as well as a major legal fight, but otherwise Georgia's life is perfect. At least it is until her latest arson case involves two doctors who served on the One - B - Board, a committee of physicians who judge whether a firefighter is eligible for a three-quarters disability pension. The arson team doesn't even have a chance to investigate the fires before it's handed over to a unit of the police force. It seems the two deceased doctors were involved in a dispute with firefighters who were injured in a warehouse fire that involved hazardous chemicals. Nobody involved got a three-quarters pension in that affair. Now somebody who vividly remembers that fire which happened twenty-five years ago is threatening to blow up a big chunk of the city unless he gets $1 million dollars. He wants Georgia to deliver the money while she is worrying that Mac might be tried for the murder of his ex- girlfriend and Georgia's best friend. FLASHOVER is a fantastic thriller that showcases the spread of corruption and the pain it causes even over a twenty-five year period. Remnant of Turk 186, it's evident the author knows the inner workings of the fire department because the minute details come across as believable and realistic. The heroine is a great role mode as a person who crashes the gender ceiling while adhering to her personal values.Harriet Klausner