Vertical Burn [Mass Market Paperback]

Earl Emerson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 2003

Six months after firefighter John Finney fought his way out of a burning Seattle warehouse to get help, no one remembers him giving the directions that pinpointed his partner’s position inside. No one can remember anything about Finney except that he left his friend to die. But Finney doesn’t believe the fire was an accident. And he doesn’t believe the campaign against him is one either. Trying to reconstruct the events from that tragic day, Finney uncovers suspicious actions by men at the scene. With only one person on his side—a female firefighter who is herself an outcast in the department—Finney begins to piece together an astounding conspiracy that will turn friends into suspects and every man inside the department into a potentially deadly enemy. And the most horrific fire is yet to burn.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This fact-based thriller is more facts than thrills, as Earl Emerson, a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department who's penned a series of solid mysteries featuring detective Thomas Black, puts his professional expertise front and center. That may be a plus, as the book's centerpiece is an arson fire in a skyscraper, a scene that brings the NYFD's heroism on 9/11 sadly to mind, giving this book in timeliness what it lacks in narrative drama. There's a plot somewhere here which has to do with a few venal, scheming bad guys in a (fictional) Seattle Fire Department who keep a hero fireman from upsetting their big score by discrediting him, and when that doesn't work, trying to kill him. But Emerson concentrates less on character, story, and pacing than on the highly technical details of urban firefighting, which, while perhaps widening Emerson's appeal to a general audience, may make this title less than compelling to the devoted fans of his mysteries. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Seattle fireman Emerson, of Shamus Award¤winning Thomas Black detective series fame, returns with his 12th novel¢a tale of arson, intrigue and sublimated rivalries among Seattle firefighters. John Finney, son of a retired fire chief and brother of a 21-year veteran, is haunted by the fire that killed one of his colleagues and placed him under departmental suspicion. Finney thinks the fire was arson, but can't prove it¢until two other fires erupt under even more suspicious circumstances, killing another one of his partners. In short order, the mistrust of Finney's colleagues flares dangerously close to criminal prosecution, while a mysterious rogue fire engine tries to run him down. Finney starts up his own investigation of the fires, and even manages to spark up a romance with Diana Moore, the department's only female firefighter. But when Finney's amateur sleuthing turns up a crooked business tycoon and an arson insurance scam involving Seattle's tallest tower, Emerson turns up the heat. The novel is, as expected, long on details of firefighting and its incipient hazards, though there is little mention of the real and enduring conflicts between the investigative arm of firefighters and law enforcement. Newcomers to Emerson's work who enjoy thrillers like Suzanne Chazin's The Fourth Angel should find little to complain about; as an example of the genre, however, in plotting and dialogue ( I ain't seen nothing but this goddamn smoke. Thought maybe my first wife was in there cooking dinner. ) this is at best a two-alarmer.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345445902
• ISBN-13: 978-0345445902
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #918,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars VERTICAL BURN SIZZLES!, May 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Vertical Burn (Hardcover)

Vertical Burn, the latest from Earl Emerson was well worth the wait. Although initially disappointed to hear it was not a Mac Fontana or a Thomas Black book, that disappointment faded before I finished the first page. His knowledge of fire fighting and his own experiences over the years all lend credibility to this intense and suspensful story. John Finney is a character you can not only like, but respect. Mr. Emerson shows a whole new dimension to his talent in this book. Earl Emerson books have always been at the top of my list, and VERTICAL BURN tops them all. Now the whining starts again as the wait for his next book begins!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Page burner, July 24, 2002

By 

Charlotte Vale-Allen (CT USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Vertical Burn (Hardcover)

When Carol Burnett was just starting out, she appeared on Talk of the Town (later called The Ed Sullivan show) and sang a song titled, "I Saw Every Movie That Ann Sheridan Ever Made." Well, I've read every book Earl Emerson has ever written. And Vertical Burn is well worth the long wait.

This stand-alone novel is one of those books that will keep you reading well into the early hours of the morning, turning the pages and absorbing the details of the action as quickly as possible. It's literally a can't-put-down book.

Given his background as a firefighter, Emerson brings a vast wealth of knowledge to this tale of the youngest firefighter in the family who slowly realizes he is being framed to take the fall for starting several horrific fires, two of them resulting in the deaths of his partners at the time.

This is a meticulously well-plotted book (which explains why it was three years in the writing) with no strings left dangling; some mad and wicked and greedy villains and a climactic high-rise fire scene that will leave you breathless.

As always, Emerson writes with a certain lyricism and with no excess fat; his characters are fully developed with very real, very human strengths and weaknesses. The narrative pacing is in top gear all the way through. It is an enormously entertaining book, even if the conspiracy at its core is a tad hard to believe.
Highly recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Milestone in You-Are-THERE! Suspense!, June 2, 2002

By 

Eleanor V. Miller (Henderson, NV United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vertical Burn (Hardcover)

If there can be a literary equivalent to cinema verite, no one is better qualified than Earl Emerson to immerse his readers in the life and death realities of the world of professional firefighting. In VERTICAL BURN, Emerson, a twenty-four year veteran of the Seattle Fire Department, gives us a graphic and gritty, warts-and-all, microcosmic vision of that world...its daily routines, terrible stresses, moments of glory and terror...as seen through the eyes of his hero, John Finney, who has dedicated his own life and honor to his profession only to find himself at the mercy of a political/criminal cabal that threatens the one and would tarnish the other. Branded a coward and denied promotion after the (to him) inexplicable death of his long-time friend and partner in a questionable fire and sensing a cover-up, Finney starts his own investigation into its circumstances and uncovers evidence of a horrifying pattern of arson for profit being executed with diabolic ingenuity, apparently aided and abetted from within the department itself. Talk about smoke and mirrors! No one except his fellow firefighter Diana Moore is willing to take him seriously when he predicts that there will be more fires, and when his worst fears are realized, he is again demonized by the political powers-that-be as a glory-seeker and an arsonist. Helpless to prevent the initiation of the arsonists' final scenario, his focus narrows to putting his own life on the line to save those of hundreds as the novel culminates in a stunning confrontation between deadly treachery and death-defying heroism high in the skies above Seattle.

VERTICAL BURN is the ultimate in you-are-there suspense fiction. Although its premise seems almost unbelievably horrific in the abstract, Mr. Emerson's skillful craftsmanship...his superb pacing and vivid characterizations...quickly caught me up in the story that he had to tell and made me completely willing to suspend my own disbelief that such things actually could be and simply accept as real his world wherein they well might and apparently do happen. Especially set in juxtaposition to the events of 9/11, I found living in that world an immensely moving and enormously satisfying reading experience.