Pyro

Rating:
Summary: The lunatic fringe in a great read
Review: This is my first experience with Earl Emerson's world - and it was a bit creepy. Emerson has a master's touch in describing the somewhat unbalanced.

Paul Wolff is a firefighter with a past and an attitude. He and his brother, when they were 10 and 13 respectively, witnessed the murder of their mother by her boyfriend. Paul's brother is started on a long path of incarceration, being blamed for the shooting death of the boyfriend.

Paul joins the fire department and is haunted by the ghost of his father, a firefighter killed in a fire 19 years before. His father's death precipitated his mother's slide into depression and alcoholism.

Paul is loner in the fire department. Moved from the station to station (the result of punching out a chief), he doesn't make friends. He doesn't want friends.

Seattle is swamped with a wave of arsons. Paul cannot stop thinking of his father who died in an arsonist's fire. Possessed of a violent temper and physical strength and skill, Wolff is not a man to be tinkered with. But he is brave, honest and compassionate.

A host of disordered characters populate these pages. Eddings, the lesbian battalion chief who has it in for female probationer Cindy Rideout, whom Wolff has taken under his wing. Slaughter, commander of the other squad in the station house who seems to have it in for Paul Wolff. Hertlein, the bullying chief knocked out by Paul, whose sanity seems in question.

And then there's Earl Ward, the arsonist who has returned to Seattle after 25 years in prison.

Not everyone in the book is wacko. But the exceptions are few.

Emerson's characters are richly drawn: they are believable and for the most part, frightening. His plot rolls along without a single hiccup.

Emerson's universe is weird, but engrossing.

Jerry

Rating:
Summary: "Fire-setters...the lonely, the loony, the lost."
Review: As exciting as a police procedural, this novel is, instead, a "fireman's procedural," tracing the story of a fire lieutenant's death twenty-five years ago in an arson fire, the failed hunt for the pyromaniac who set it, and the "pyro's" possible return to action in Seattle during a spate of recent arsons. Twenty-nine-year-old Paul Wollf is the son of this lieutenant, who died when Wollf was only four, an event which destroyed his childhood. His mother, unable to cope, descended into depression and alcoholism and neglected the children. Six years later, they witnessed her murder by their stepfather, who was then murdered himself. When a string of recent arsons keeps the station busy all night for several nights in a row, Wolff notices an odd "signature" to the fires, the same "signature" that appeared at the fire that killed his father twenty-five years ago.

Determined to avenge his father's death, Wollf is often stymied by jealousies and bureaucracy within his own department. An angry man who has never been able to form close relationships, perhaps due to his traumatic past, Wollf has no one in whom he can confide. When his favorite film star of the past, the elderly Patricia Pennington, is the victim of one of these new fires, Wollf meets both her granddaughter and housekeeper, two women of markedly different temperaments, both of whom play key roles in the events which follow.

A probationary firefighter, a stationhouse veteran, Patricia Pennington's granddaughter, Wollf, and the "pyro" himself all tell the story in first-person accounts, broadening the focus and casting new light on Wollf, the inner workings of the fire department, and the madness of pyromania. Acutely psychological and intense in the search for the "pyro," the novel also sheds light on some of the reasons firemen are drawn to the job and the games some are willing to play in order acquire power.

For author Earl Emerson, himself a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department, realism is critical. Technical aspects of fighting fires, venting roofs, using fans to drive out smoke, handling ladders, and saving lives are fascinating, fully described, and completely integrated into this exciting story. The complexities of bureaucracy, the reality of public relations and publicity, and the difficulties of managing personal relationships are also part of the realism. A fast-paced action novel filled with dramatic fire-fighting scenes, the novel is a tribute to the heroic men and women who risk their lives daily. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: You'll race through this book like, well...wildfire
Review: I picked up this book after hearing the author interviewed on KUOW, and boy am I glad I did. My only complaint was that I don't feel the story needed to be told from so many characters' points of view, but I didn't find that it detracted from the story too much. However, I don't think it added all that much to the story, either. I would have preferred it if the story stayed in Wollf's head or Wollf's and Ward's heads. Regardless, the plot was tightly woven, and I enjoyed learning more about what firefighters do, how they do it, and the unique dynamics that evolve among and within the crews. Emerson did a great job of creating characters that I loved, disliked, pitied, sympathized with, and laughed at --- sometimes all in the same character. I have since gone to the library and acquired Vertical Burn and Into the Inferno. If you're looking for a fast-paced, entertaining read, this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: This one grew on me...
Review: I recently finished the book Pyro by Earl Emerson. If I had written this review right after I finished the book, it would have been average at best. But it's grown on me a bit over the last two days...

Lt. Paul Wollf is a firefighter in Seattle, and he can best be described as an excellent firefighter with anger and impulse management control issues. His father was also a firefighter and died in a fire that was set by a serial arsonist. The arsonist appears to be back after a 25 year absence, and Wollf is trying to figure out whether its the same guy who killed his father and now seems to want him dead. After his father died when he was young, his mom went to pieces, living with a number of lowlifes. One killed his mom, and his brother and him killed the killer. Due to bad representation, his brother ended up serving time for that murder, and that led to his anger issues. The two story lines blend together at the end when the arsonist and Wollf come face to face and he learns some truths he didn't realize.

The novel seems rather dark, and Wolff's fellow firefighters (especially his bosses) are all pretty dysfunctional. Some of the leadership behavior is so bad, I kept thinking 1) why?, and 2) this wouldn't be allowed to continue. As the book progresses, you start to understand some of the tension and interplay between Wollf and the bosses that causes all the conflict. I guess I didn't think much of it to start as I was expecting more action. But when I thought back on the characters and the interplay between them, I realized the book was a bit deeper than I originally gave it credit for.

Rating:
Summary: Emerson's work just keeps getting better!
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: interesting character study of fire fighters
Review: Twenty-five years ago two boys lost their fire-fighting father to a pyromaniac. Their mother could not cope with the loss of her husband and increasingly turned to the bottle. The brothers literally raised themselves until one dark night six years after their father's death, when their mother's boyfriend got nasty and killed their mother. That night their lives changed forever. Now they are adults, the older brother is incarcerated and the younger brother, Paul Wolff becomes a firefighter. Fires start to escalate in the city and they have a very similar pattern to the fires that Paul's father was investigating at the time of his death.

While this book can be classified as a procedural, I found it to be much more of a character study. The story is told by alternating points of view of the major characters which really allowed the reader to get to know each character, and to be absorbed into their story. Fast-paced and page-turning, this is book is well-worth your time.