Fire Lover [Unabridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Joseph Wambaugh (Author), Ken Howard (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2002

From master crime writer Joseph Wambaugh, the acclaimed author of such classics as The Onion Field and The Choirboys, comes the extraordinary true story of a firefighter who may have been, according to U.S. government profilers, "the most prolific American arsonist of the twentieth century."

John Orr rose through the ranks of the Glendale Fire Department to become fire captain and one of southern California's best-known and respected arson investigators. But while Orr busted a string of petty arsonists, there was one serial criminal he could not track down. Homes, retail stores during business hours, fields of dry brush in stifling summer heat -- little was safe from the fire lover's obsession to see them burn.

But after years of terror and destruction, the Fire lover finally left behind a precious clue that helped investigators discover his true identity, to the shock and disbelief of the firefighting community.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Returning to print after a six-year hiatus, former LAPD detective sergeant and bestselling author Wambaugh (The Onion Field, etc.) focuses on firefighters rather than his usual police beat. It's a surprising switch, but Wambaugh's regular readers will not be disappointed, since sparks fly throughout this potent probe into the life of arson investigator John Leonard Orr. Fascinated by fires in his L.A. childhood, Orr learned fire fighting in the air force. An eccentric loner with few friends and a womanizer with a string of failed marriages, he was rejected by the LAPD and LAFD. In 1974 he joined the Glendale Fire Department, where his gun-toting, crime-crusading capers earned him the label "cop wanna-be" from both police and firemen. Rising in the ranks, Orr became well-known as an arson sleuth. He had a sixth sense for tracking pyros, but there was one serial arsonist, responsible for the deaths of four, who remained elusive. In 1990, during the worst fire in Glendale's history, some noted that Orr's behavior "seemed very peculiar." That same year, Orr was appointed fire captain and began writing a "fact-based novel" about a serial arsonist who turns out to be a firefighter and in it Orr revealed certain facts about the unsolved arson case that he couldn't have known through his work. Was Orr the serial arsonist? Wambaugh recreates these events for a suspenseful, adrenaline-rush account of what one profiler dubbed "probably the most prolific American arsonist" of the 20th century.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A tale of two men a respected fire chief and a prolific arsonist who turned out to be one and the same.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Harper Audio; Unabridged edition (April 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060095466
• ISBN-13: 978-0060095468
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 4.4 x 2.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,608,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the bestselling author of eighteen prior works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Choirboys and The Onion Field. Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times' said, "Joseph Wambaugh is one of those Los Angeles authors whose popular success always has overshadowed his importance as a writer. Wambaugh is an important writer not simply because he's ambitious and technically accomplished, but also because he 'owns' a critical slice of L.A.'s literary real estate: the Los Angeles Police Department -- not just its inner workings, but also its relationship to the city's political establishment and to its intricately enmeshed social classes. There is no other American metropolis whose civic history is so inextricably intertwined with the history of its police department. That alone would make Wambaugh's work significant, but the importance of his best fiction and nonfiction is amplified by his unequaled ability to capture the nuances of the LAPD's isolated and essentially Hobbesian tribal culture."
Understandably, then, Wambaugh, who lives in California, is known as the "cop-author" with emphasis on the former, since, according to him, most of his fantasies involve the arrest and prosecution of half of California's motorists. Wambaugh still prefers the company of police officers and interviews hundreds of them for story material. However, he is aghast that these days most of the young cops drink iced tea or light beer, both of which he finds exceedingly vile, causing him to obsessively fume with Hamlet that, 'The time is out of joint.' He expects to die in a road rage encounter. For more information please visit www.josephwambaugh.net or www.hollywoodmoon.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strange fish, May 17, 2002

By 

Dave Schwinghammer "Dave Schwinghammer" (Little Falls, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fire Lover: A True Story (Hardcover)

I've read all of Joseph Wambaugh's books, from THE NEW CENTURIONS to FIRE LOVER, and this was the least enjoyable.

FIRE LOVER probably doesn't measure up because there's not a whole lot of suspense. We know from the synopsis that arson investigator John Orr may have been the most notorious arsonist since Nero. Orr was a brazen offender, setting fires in the middle of the day when customers were in the stores, leading to the death of four at Ole's Home Center in South Pasadena. But he makes one big mistake, leaving his fingerprint on yellow legal paper that was used, along with a cigarette, a rubber band and three matches, to start a fire similar to the one at Ole's Home Center. The fingerprint was almost ignored because of the jealousy between firemen and police arson investigators.

Much of the book involves courtroom gymnastics. There are so many closing statements that you tell yourself, "this must be the last one." But you're wrong. There are more of them during the penalty phase and Wambaugh cites them all, practically verbatim.

Wambaugh is also famous for his irreverent narrative tone. This works in CHOIRBOYS, where we assume the narrator is a man in blue, but here he's supposed to be an objective journalist. He refers to jurors, lawyers, and judges as "...strange fish that lazily glide, blowing gas bubbles that pop ineffectually on the surface of the litigation tanks in which they live and breed." He likes this strange fish motif so much he uses it over and over again.

All of this said, I'm still looking forward to Wambaugh's next fictional tome. It seems an eternity since FLOATERS.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars chilling true crime biography, May 5, 2002

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fire Lover: A True Story (Hardcover)

As a child in Los Angeles, John Orr revered firefighters watching them as if he was sitting in front of a TV set. He relished the way the firefighter risked his or her life in the line of duty. As a young adult, John joined the Glendale, California Fire Department and quickly became one of the best. Over time, he became a fire captain and eventually an arson investigator highly regarded by his peers as one of the foremost experts.

John also moonlighted as an arsonist who remained undetectable for years and whose fires killed four people and caused millions of dollars in damage. When he finally made an error and was caught, the entire firefighting community refused to believe that one of their heroes could be a serial arsonist.

The hardest thing about this true-life crime biography is that it is true crime caused by someone whose dangerous occupation most people respect even more so after 9/11. So chilling is this account this reviewer keeps wanting to paraphrase an old horror movie ad that it's only a book. However, Joseph Wambaugh brings the fiery duality of his subject vividly alive so that the reader observes a criminal considered by the FBI as "the most prolific American arsonist of the twentieth century". Fans of true crime will want to read this account that never slows down as FIRE LOVER: A TRUE STORY is Mr. Wambaugh at his finest.

Harriet Klausner

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Story, Two Flaws, May 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Fire Lover: A True Story (Hardcover)

As someone who read and enjoyed "The Onion Field," "The Blue Knight," "The New Centurions," "The Blooding," and "The Secrets of Harry Bright," I was happy to see that Wambaugh served us up another fascinating true crime story, one about someone who was probably the most prolific arsonist in American history. The story of how John Orr was brought to justice is intriguing and gripping, without wallowing in grisly details.

I do have to deduct a star from my review for two reasons:

1. Just as he berates the lawyers trying the case for subjecting the juries to too much detail, the author overdoes it himself on occasion.

2. As a related point, some of the evidence Wambaugh cites would have been much easier to understand with some pictures, diagrams, and timelines. Yet these, as in his other true crime stories, are absent.