Pyro

I sent it to my son when he was in Afghanistan. We're both fans of Emerson

I have long been a fan of Earl Emerson and am very excited that he has broadened his style. This book is a thriller that I found hard to put down. While written in the style of several different characters point of view the story still maintains velocity and suspense. My heart is still pounding after the book finishes with a very satisfying end that does not compromise the main character. I could almost feel the flames on my face and hear the crackling of a building burning down. Like any exhilarting ride the only downside is that it comes to an end too quickly.

I just started reading Earl Emerson's books, which involve Firefighters and I became immediately hooked. His books are real page turners, with lots of plot twists. The characters are all pretty realistic with their human flaws. Having recently graduated from the Fire Academy, Pyro was even more interesting for me, because one of the main characters is a female firefighter who is also a new recruit. Earl Emerson's books are well written and entertaining.

Emerson's characters have always been memorable, one of the strengths of his writing. However, in the serial characters of Thomas Black and Mac Fontana, the stories were largely propelled by events outside the characters themselves. In stepping away from that world into the stand-alone novels he's writing now, Emerson's skill in characterization comes to the fore. Always tightly woven and skillfully plotted, now his novels are driven by the characters themselves, their daily lives, their histories, their traumas, their coping skills (or lack thereof). As a result, what were enjoyable, fun, well-done if typical genre novels have become riveting and intense tales in their own right. I'm particularly impressed with "Pyro." Paul Wollf is as believable and real as his past is--traumatic and horrific as it turns out to be. It's particularly impressive that Emerson doesn't try to make his characters "nice" or apologize for their flaws. He simply turns them loose and lets the chips fall where they may, and tells the story as it follows. While I originally found the multiple points of view distracting, they were so skillfully handled by Lt. Emerson that it didn't take more than a section or two before each character's insight became indispensible to properly telling the tale. One or two twists concerning the protagonist, Paul Wollf, became obvious to me early on, twists that weren't actually explained until towards the end of the novel. But I don't believe they were meant to be hidden--and what I thought I knew only increased the tension and kept me even more riveted to the story. There aren't many books I "can't" put down, but this was one I had to stick with until the end--which was about 1:15 a.m last night. I've read and enjoyed all of Lt. Emerson's other books, and I won't be unhappy if he does decide to return to the worlds of Mac Fontana and Thomas Black in the future. But "Pyro" stands head and shoulders above the others--though "Into the Inferno" is close beside it. I found Lt. Emerson's novels because of a fondness for mysteries and a fascination with firefighting and firefighters; I've stayed because he tells a damn good tale. He states on his website that he made the decision to step away from the "tried and true" formula of his series characters into the world of "stand alone" thrillers to challenge himself as a writer. In "Pyro," he's not only met the challenge, he's exceeded it.

Paul Wollf, Emerson's newest protagonist, is another superlative example of a deeply flawed individual who wins the reader's sympathy despite some character traits which, if Wolff were a real person, would make a sane person keep him at the proverbial barge pole's distance. But make no mistake, Emerson has not recreated his previous hero, Swope, in Wollf. Where Swope was a mindless womanizer, Wollf is a shy guy who knows he's not good enough for a good woman. Where Swope was a popular guy around the firehouse, Wollf holds the entire world at bay, his sternly leashed violence like a guard dog between him and his fellow creatures. But as in "Into the Inferno" Emerson does tell a thumping good action yarn all the while interlacing it with the hero's movement towards self-discovery. If Swope was the guy you hoped would be taking you home after the party, then Wollf is the guy you hope you're waking up with on a quiet Sunday morning. As always, Emerson's well-honed descriptions and his ear for dialogue boost a story that in less gifted hands might end up merely workmanlike. Example: "I suck dark smoke all the way up. It tastes like the undercarriage of a fertilizer truck might." What an image! Makes me want a swig of Listerine bad! Another plus for this author -- and some may disagree with me on this, but so what? They'll be wrong! -- is that he is so NOT afraid to stretch his skills, I mean really work at his craft, and the proof is in how he told this story from so many different points of view and still made the story cohesive and kept the flow of events and emotions constant. That can't have been easy, and it had to have been a conscious choice right from the beginning of the book. I wish I wasn't going to have to wait another year or more for the next book by Earl Emerson. And I wish he'd do another book tour through the Midwest sometime! Why does the left coast get all the breaks? Thanks, too, Mr. Emerson, for the opening quote from Elmer Slezak. I miss him!