Customer Reviews

Fire Lover

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

John Orr was a firefighter by destiny but not desire. His hidden wish was to someday be a policeman, but that never came to be. So he followed into the firefighting world after spending his boyhood days filled with marveling at firefighters rushing to extinguish blazes in life risking manuevers. Those impressions led him to become a firefighter with the Glendale Fire Department when he became an adult.

While there, he quickly climbed the ranks until he reached fire captain. Along the way he gained the reputation of being Southern Cal's most famous and respected arson investigator as well as an author of firefighting articles which lead to a fact-based book of his own. A rather storybook tale of a perfect life.

As Orr's ego grew, he needed more. The oportunity arose when one arson continuously escape his grasps. The arsonist, using the same simple yet devastating device, was basically terrorizing the area and his frolicing left four innocent people dead as well as destroying millions of dollars in property damage as well as the damage to nature itself. As is often the case, this arsonist got comfortable and made a mistake after years of devastation. One precious clue was left behind and fell into the wrong hands. This clue would reveal the true identity of the cruel arsonist and the horrid facts behind his hobby.

Orr had created the fires to create fame for himself. His ego wanted, needed the limelight and he needed a nemisis uncatchable that would keep him in the public's eye. Sadly, his own desire for the ultimate reward was of little value in a firefighter world and beyond his grasp. Probably acknowledging this, he created his own fame through terror. John Orr was a firefighter that did not belong in that world.

The author does an excellent job on this story and tells it like it is. The court room part is a bit longwinded and boring, but reality isn't always excitement, as John Orr himself can tell you.

This is right up there with THE ONION FIELD as a Wambaugh non-fiction book. Very interesting reading about a firefighter who was also a serial arsonist. Got a little long in the court room section of the book but other than that I found it very compeling. Wambaugh is always a great read.

as a firefighter and one who specializes in fire investigation, this was a captivating read. Highly recommended.

This is the story of perhaps the most prolific fire-bug in the history of the United States, John Leonard Orr, who is now serving a life sentence without possibility of parole, in the U.S. Penitentiary at Lompoc, California, where in due time he will be transferred to the California State system.

The story leads the reader through Orr's life as a reject from LA Law Enforcement, a failed LA Fire Dept. academy starter, to the acceptance by Glendale Fire Dept., a much lower-paid position, where over a period of years he became a Captain/Arson Investigator.

As an avocation, the Fire Captain, sworn to protect the public from fires, was starting them by the hundreds, and then grabbing attention by solving "How" they were started. He seemed to have an intuitive grasp of where to find the points of origin, and the incendiary devices.

Orr was a copy "wannabe," who tried constantly to impress the police with his acuity and bravery, effecting arrests (although it was not his job). He carried guns in the shower. But he was all a sham.

Eventually, Orr was caught, of course, and tried, and convicted. The evidence against him was as damning as in the O.J. Simpson case, but there was no race card to throw in, and no jury nullification factor.

He caused the deaths of a least four, and perhaps five people, in one fire at Ole's Dept. store, and he wrote a supposedly fiction book, which reads like a very poorly written diary, and the contents of which were damning and led to his conviction.

Orr thought he was smater than anyone else, but his own big mouth and braggadocio was his ulitimate dowlfall.

I ordered this book and Orr's own "masterpiece", Points of Origin, after watching a presentation by Court TV. He will not profit from his writing, as it goes to restitution, but even if he did, if the quality of his writing talent has anything to do with it, he'll die penniless.

Joseph Wambaugh, on the other hand, is a wonderful craftsman, also from the LA Police Dept., where he was a detective sergeant. In addition to this book, he wrote The Onion Field, The Blooding, and The Choirboys.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre, Retired
Oregon Dept. of Corrections

"Fire Lover" is an very exciting and well-written true crime book by Joseph Wambaugh, the author famous for writing "The Onion Field". The descriptions of fires, vehicle chases and other action sequences are so clear and thrilling you really feel like you are there. It drew me in from the very beginning, with an extremely realistic account of three simultaneous and deadly fires in Pasadena, California businesses on October 10, 1984. Clues eventually lead to arson investigator John Orr as the arsonist in these and a series of other fires. Orr, it turns out, was a legend in his own mind who used the fire investigation as the basis for a poorly written book. I was glad that Wambaugh did not neglect Orr's early life. I always want a true crime author to answer the question "why", and there was more information about Orr's background than I had expected. Fascination with fire is a big indication of psychopathology. I did a little skipping, though. Emphasis on the scenes inside the courtroom got a little tiresome. Well-written and very vivid, "Fire Lover" is by far one of the best true crime books I have ever read.

I was blown away by the contrast between Court TV's portrayal of John Orr and Fire Lover. Court TV's program "The System" made Orr seem like a brilliant investigator who went mad.
By contrast, Fire Lover portrayed Orr as a very irresponsible arson investigator totally obcessed by law enforcement.
If Orr wanted so badly to be a cop he should have switched jobs. His huge ego and questionable value to the public good puts him in a league with Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. Based on my information about these three idiots, I guess the romantic image of a genius gone bad is pure fiction.

I like to read a lot of true crime stories. There are some winners and some losers. This one is great! Mr. Wambaugh tells this true story like a fiction thriller! Unless you already new the story, you don't find out the truth about John Orr and his horrible crimes until later in the book. Mr. Wambaugh did a great job of keeping a great pace with the story. I read this book in two days. How John Orr slipped through the cracks and arrived at the position he did is amazing. He had a lot of people fooled. Also, the chrome plated cajones John Orr had to basically commit his crimes to paper in order to sell it as a fiction novel. Anyone who like mystery novels or true crime novels will get a lot of enjoyment out of this book. It is a quick, good read.

I first encountered the story of John Orr in an American Justice episode. Something about an arson investigator who sets fires along the way to an arson conference, like a child leaving a trail of blueberries in hopes a rabbit will follow, was unforgettably improbable. The full story of the Glendale fire captain and his little habit is told by true crime great Joseph Wambaugh in his patented police-procedural-style.

Even if he hadn't been a arsonist, John Orr would have been a notable jerk. Apparently Orr yearned to join the LAPD but didn't make the cut and subsequently nursed a resentment toward police and life in general. (Wambaugh declares that the LAPD was Harvard of policing in the 1970s. He may be prejudiced just a tad being a former LAPDer himself. Of course, being an East Coast native my immediate reaction was "No way someone would rather work on the LAPD than the NYPD!" And that was based on no first hand knowledge so, who knows, maybe Wambaugh is right.) Orr instead gets a job as a fireman, ultimately becoming an arson investigator in Glendale all the while complaining about the arrogance of the police. He also, bizarrely, becomes obsessed with catching shoplifters in his spare time, an activity which instead of earning the respect of the police actually annoys them. Once Orr catches the proverbial punks red-handed, the police have to come and arrest the perp and confiscate their ill-gotten gains of, oh, $25 or so.

How, when and why Orr turns to arson is unclear but turn he does moving from brush-fires to his favorites, starting fires in home improvement stores, one of which results in four deaths. Not content with committing the arsons and in some cases showing up later to film the resulting fire, Orr writes a novel detailing his crimes. A bad novel. A bad novel in which the arsonist is turned on by "his fire." The few passages quoted were enough to convince me that John Orr needs to do hard time just for his writing.

Wambaugh isn't one to dig too deeply into the motivations of criminals beyond what's needed to understand them enough to catch them. I can easily imagine Wambaugh muttering "scumbag" when he wrote about Orr. Not that I disagree. Orr was a scumbag, but his crimes were more interesting than he was.

This is not an easy story to tell because, let's face it, an arsonist works alone. Nor is it the sort of story that is action-packed, most of the police work involves looking at fingerprints and maps. So it's impressive that Wambaugh manages to tell a story that is not only interesting but worthy of the Edgar Award it was given. (I've read two of the other Fact Crime books nominated that year and this book is the best of the three.) Wambaugh does a good job of giving the reader a sense of who the investigators are and what the case means to them without falling into the usual traps of adding in pointless details about their personal lives or fashion choices. This book isn't for all True Crime fans but it's a sure-bet for Wambaugh and police-procedural fans.

Even though you know how the true story ends it is a page turner. The arsonist's mind is beyond comprehension. Wambaugh does a great job with this account.

The story of the arson inspector who turns out to be a firebug is a true man-bites-dog story, one made more compelling by the betrayal of trust and life-and-death stakes. Unfortunately, the story pokes along, punctuated by Wambaugh's efforts to show how clever he is as a writer. Fire Lover does not compare well to The Onion Field, a spell-binding non-fiction work by the same author, but if you want the facts related to this case, this book provides them.