Customer Reviews

Trial by Fire

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In J. A. Jance's "Trial by Fire," forty-seven year old Alison (Ali) Reynolds is a financially well-off widow who has just completed remodeling her home in Sedona, Arizona. Her son, Chris, is married and her parents are healthy and active. There is no special man in her life and, although Ali is a trained journalist, she is currently unemployed. When the sheriff of Yavapai County, Gordon Maxwell, asks her to handle media relations for his department, she accepts his offer. Although she has no formal training in law enforcement, Ali has a weapons permit and, in the past, she has gotten into "one scrape after another, sometimes dealing with some very bad people."

Ali's new position turns out to be a bit more stressful than she had anticipated. Not only do her colleagues resent her, but she must also remain calm under extreme pressure. The case occupying everyone's mind involves arson and attempted murder. An unknown perpetrator left a woman bound and naked in a burning house. Although Ali's mission is to handle the press, she is not content to sit on the sidelines. Instead, she aggressively pursues leads and ultimately endangers her life to catch the perpetrator.

Jance is a competent writer who keeps her well-constructed plot moving along briskly. She skillfully depicts her Arizona setting and has created a group of varied and intriguing characters, especially the multilingual Sister Anselm Becker. Sister Anselm is a trained psychologist who works as a patient advocate. The nun's patients look upon her as their guardian angel. However, she can turn into a pit bull when a pushy visitor tries to harm those in her care. The heroine, Ali, is spunky, smart, fearless, curious to a fault, and compassionate. Although there is a minor romantic subplot, it is downplayed. The focus is on the chief suspects: an apparently grieving husband and his two venal and obnoxious stepchildren. Jance's themes are typical for novels of this type: greed, family dysfunction, infidelity, competition among law enforcement agencies, and the media's insatiable appetite for sensationalism. The book's main flaw is its overly complicated and unrealistic ending. Still, "Trial by Fire" should appeal to fans of mainstream thrillers free of profanity and gore.

Ali Reynolds is getting ready to enjoy some leisure when Sheriff Gordon Maxwell offers her a temporary job as his media representative. She fends off reporters' questions with skill and grace, but after one day on the job she is sidelined, to sit on the hospital burn unit and wait for information about a newly admitted burn victim. A woman, identity unknown, who was pulled at the last minute (and probably too late) from a deliberately set house fire.

Ali spends her time in the burn unit waiting room, hoping to gather some clues abou the mystery woman, but soon finds herself drawn in to a web of complicated relationships and underhanded schemes. From public relations she soon slides into amateur sleuthing, and finds herself in an ever more dangerous situation.

So far, so good, but the author has filled the book with enough characters to populate a small town, each with their own personal history, baggage, unhappy childhoods and marital cheating. Author Jance tell us all about them, along with their own side-plots and sub-plots, most of which are never resolved. Do we ever find out who the mystery woman really is? Or, who set the fire? Or why? And what about the Paul Klee painting that was burned up in the fire? You'll have to read the book to find out, but it's hardly worth the effort.

J.A. Jance is a best-selling author, but this book is only mildly interesting, and leaves more questions unanswered than resolved. It might be good for an airplane read, but overall I don't recommend it. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

This was a good read, with a few nitpicky bits which I'll rant about at the end so as not to spoil anything

After a slightly weak opening (a victim in a fire actualy wakes in the blaze and thinks 'why would I be in hell') Trial by Fire, begins as Ali Reynolds is offered a job as a media consultant or some such, for the police. She recieves a fairly icey reception from her new colleauges, but this has nothing to do with the plot so its not really mentioned again.

Ali joins forces with a nun who cares for the burnt lady mentioned above, and together they try to find the perp behind it all.

In Jance style the main focus in on characters personal lives and background rather than car chases or gunfights, so if thats what you like then this is the book for you.

A Touch of ranting.

First of all, the nun instructs Ali to buy a wig and sit in the waiting room of the burn unit to spy on the family of the burned woman. Not so much a bad plan, but its just such a ridiculous image. In fact much of the book is spent with Ali in a wig listening in to the family. Its a little silly and a little yawn worthy

Second of all, the story gets starts to become melodramtic towards the end. While Jance had skillfully set up a number of characters who may have been the attackers, in the end the whole thing was only over a stolen painting (a very valuable one at that but it was still a stretch to imagine someone going to the trouble to commit a murderous arson to steal it)
So the author created a contrived backstory for the villian, which was something along the lines of the victim's dead ex-husband raped his sister (the villian's mother) but she didn't get any money out of it. Anyways it was all a bit much.

Ali also jumps into bed with a new love interest, and not that I'm an Ali Reynolds expert but it all seemed a bit sudden and surprising, for what I thought her character was like.

Anyways some sillyness aside its good read and I admire Jance's focus on characer building and attempts to make her characters have 'real life' problems.

Trial by Fire - J. A. Jance

I won't bore you with a recap of the story since so many others did a better job at it than I can do. What I will tell you is why I did like this book and why, at the same time, I didn't like this book.

I've been a fan of Ms Jance's since I found, at my local library, the Joanna Brady books. These I would describe as police procedural/suspense novels and they had wonderful stories, excellent plotting, wonderful mysteries and terrific characters with a lot of depth and realism.

"Trial by Fire" is the first Ali Reynolds book that I have read. I haven't read anything by Ms Jance in quite a while, and I was thrilled to be offered this book. I loved the Joanna Brady books so why not this one? What I didn't take into account was the change in Ms Jances writing style. I know authors get bored writing the same way and the same thing all the time, but this was a bit of a shock to me. This book should really have not been labeled a suspense; not that it wasn't, it had it's moments of suspense. But the fact is, this book read much more like a "cozy mystery", a bit fluffier and way less hard-boiled than the average suspense novel, less down and dirty action and had way more of the "warm and fuzzy" factor than I want in my suspense books.

One problem I had is with the oddness at the end, when the suspect is finally caught and just confesses to everything without a care in the world. It was too neat and to clean to be believable. It was almost as if Ms Jance wrote too much before that and had to find a quick way to tie it all up. The secondary story was very interesting and received short shrift as far as I was concerned.

Aspects of this book reminded me a lot of Christian novels too. It was interesting to learn of Sister Anselm's back story but it wasn't all that necessary to go into so much depth, nor was it necessary to give so many pages over to the other two burn victim's stories. I just couldn't see how they helped the story progress.

I liked this book if I think of it as a "cozy mystery", and will most definitely be buying the others in this series and even the next one coming up, but as a novel of suspense it left something to be desired. All in all I just think it was mislabeled and had the wrong style of cover; had it been labeled as something else, with different art, I may not have had the same expectations as I did when I started this book.

In Sedona, Arizona, former TV reporter Ali Reynolds obtains a media-relations position with the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department. Ali knows to tread carefully as her predecessor Information Officer Devon Ryan, on administrative leave pending an investigation into illegal activity, got into a physical altercation with Cononimo Courier reporter Oscar Reyes who may sue the department for the black eye he received at a news conference.

Ali handles the press as the cops investigate a suspicious fire that left a Jane Doe barely alive with third degree burns, an ability to communicate by winking only, and amnesia. Also at Saint Gregory's Hospital is Sister Anselm, known as the "Angel of Death," for her nurturing of unidentified patients; she provides comfort to the latest injured soul. Meanwhile Ali sneaks into the burn unit to obtain more information from the victim while a killer targets the nursing nun, but soon teams up with the Sister.

In her latest case (see Cruel Intentions), readers need to ignore why a public relations specialist would investigate an attempted murder-arson, this is an engaging amateur sleuth that fans will enjoy although the action is limited as Ali mostly works her Mojo in the burn unit. Still fans will appreciate the teaming up of the nun and the former reporter as they make an intriguing pairing working together to solve the mystery.

Harriet Klausner

I have enjoyed Jance's work in the past, but with this book she seems to be riding on her reputation. She violates the most basic rule of good writing -- show, don't tell. Her whole first chapter, for example, is just a tell, tell, tell chapter, filled with meaningless chatter about her heroine without any discernible purpose.

The rest of the book is a bit better, but not much. Readers would do better to visit, or revisit, some of Jance's early work where she is still working at writing well.

I really enjoy this series. I just wish that Leland Brooks would be included more. His character is a hoot, but then again, who wouldn't love a rhinestone wearing butler that has a knack for being in the right place at the right time with exactly what you need.

Since Ali no longer has a nine to five job she appears to be a woman of leisure, that is until she is approached to be a media consultation for the Yavapai County Police Department. It sounds intriguing, so why not, she has nothing better to do.

On her first call out, she is brought face to face with a raging fire in the Arizona desert and the near lifeless body if an older woman who has been pulled from the charred structure. As a media consultation it is now her job to keep the pack of reporters away from the apparent arson and a domestic terrorist group called ELF. But of course with Ali, it becomes more then just a job, she is introduced to Sister Anselm, also known as the Angel of Death, and between the two of them, they are on a mission to find out the identity of the fire victim and to find out what lead up to this attack.

As the story unfolds, Jance allows the reader to come up with their own ideas of guilt and innocence until the final moment when the truth is revealed and what lead that person to make the choices that were made. Families have secrets, departments have leaks and maybe in the long run, Ali will let go of her fears and jump without first looking around to see who is watching her.

The adventurous life of Ali Reynolds continues with Trial by Fire. For those who have traveled through the Sedona/Prescott,AZ area the terrain covered in the book will seem familiar. While some aspects of this offering are a little "boilerplate" other elements are innovative though ephemeral.

When Ali is recruited by the local sheriff to act as the departments temporary Media Information Officer she accepts the job and becomes embroiled in hostile situations she had not anticipated (both inside and outside of the department). Add to this a destructive fire, the discovery of the nude body of a badly burned anonymous woman, and the questions begging answers, ie., who is the victim, why was she left at the scene, who did this to her and why.

Of course Ali is plunged into the middle of the mystery of the burned woman. Ali's karma seems to demand that she interact with and solve the problems of the wounded of the world. She has an Iraq veteran daughter-in-law who returned from deployment missing two limbs, an adopted overweight cat named Sam who was mauled by a raccoon and is also missing a few pieces. Then there is the fact that as the director of the Askins scholarship awards she has chosen as the two recipients a wheelchair bound young woman and a teen-aged rape victim. Except for her actions near the end of the book when she has a personal ephiphany concerning love, it seems that Ali could be author Jances personal nominee for sainthood.

On the plus side: The idea of developing a good portion of the story in a hospital ICU waiting room is an unusual twist that provides a textured portrait of the suspects and a plethora of possibilities as to the culprit. It also acts as a miniaturized version of society with glimpses of the love, greed, jealousy, feelings of loss and/or entitlement, etc. that are prevalent in the world. The identity of the instigator of the crime becomes fairly obvious about three quarters of the way through the book but there is still enough additional mayhem to keep the reader involved.

I picked this book at random to try on my new kindle my lovely grandchildren bought me for Christmas. Even with me pushing the turn page button before I was ready and have to use the previous button a lot it was worth it. The book kept me interested and I stayed up and finished it. As a long time reader of most anything but with favorite authors suspense and mystery I would recomend this book highly. J. A. Vance will be added to my list along side Robert Parker, J.D.Robb, James Patterson, etc.

Unlike most of the rest of us, Ali Reynolds is a world-class snoop. In Trial by Fire, she obtains official permission to do so when given a badge as the interim media relations person for the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office. For this outing, she is assigned by the sheriff to see what information she can pick up in the visitors' lounge outside a hospital burn unit where a victim of a house fire is being treated. To me, this situation appears to be an unlikely use of the taxpayer's money, but then our heroine would not have become involved in the remainder of the story. There, Ali becomes friends with Sister Anselm, who is a patients' advocate attached to that unit, charged with caring for the victim. Sister Anselm has an interesting backstory, as, of course, does the burn victim, once she is identified. Since the fire seems to have been started by members of ELF (Earth Liberation Front), an alleged domestic environmental terrorist organization, the feds in the form of the ATF are called in and, predictably, try to take over the investigation, leaving the local gendarmes out in the cold (well...maybe out in the heat, since the action takes places in central Arizona during the summer, where midday temperatures can soar to 110°F and more). While playing an out-in-the-open undercover operative (with a red wig and a pink tracksuit!), Ali also juggles her cooled romantic attachment to Dave Holman, a Yavapai County homicide detective, and a warmer one with one B. Simpson (who uses only his first intitial, since his given name is Bartholomew), a computer consultant who helped Ali deal with the bad guy in the last entry in the series, Cruel Intent. When the perpetrator runs off with Sister Anselm, Ali manages to bully her way onto the ATF helicopter (her badge seems to carry more weight than is likely when dealing with the feds), for the showdown in the desert that brings to justice one of the co-conspirators involved with the titular fire. Bringing the other one to justice involves a last-minute somewhat convuluted backstory that has a rather tacked-on feel to it. Nevertheless, this is a series entry that can be recommended as highly as the earlier ones I have reviewed.