Customer Reviews

What Burns Within (Leisure Fiction)

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What Burns Within by Sandra Ruttan marks the debut of a police procedural series, one that is a must-read for anyone who appreciates the genre. The reader follows RCMP Constables Tain, Hart and Nolan through the investigation of three difficult cases, until the officers discover their cases converge.

Tain, Hart and Nolan are three officers who "share a common tendency toward insubordination and independence." They were split up due to fall-out from a difficult case. Now, the Vancouver officers have tough new cases. Tain is dealing with child abduction cases in which young girls have been snatched off the street. Ashlyn Hart works arson fires, until the body of one of the abducted girls is discovered in a fire. And, Craig Nolan is handling the investigation into a serial rapist. Despite their supervisor's attempt to keep them apart, the three investigators discover common links in the cases. Suddenly, they're in the middle of a case that could blow up for the Vancouver RCMP.

Ruttan has created three strong-willed characters, strong officers with a dedication to their job, and an unwillingness to deal with fools. They may share that trait, but Ruttan has given them distinct personalities and backgrounds. She skillfully handles the minor characters as well, from Sergeant Daly to key witnesses, and the abducted girls. The cases are fascinating in this excellent police procedural. What Burns Within is an outstanding debut for a new series. Fans will be waiting for the November release of the follow-up, The Frailty of Flesh.

This book is a wonderful first entry in a new series. Full of action and great characters the story flows to a very logical conclusion that is not at all easy to guess. Keeps the reader wondering - excellent book!

The author is a native of Vancouver, CA and a co-founder of Spinetingler Magazine, an online e-zine devoted to mystery literature. Her background serves her well in this initial entry in an expected series of police procedurals featuring Vancouver police officers.

This minutely and tightly constructed novel has the RMCP striving to solve a series of arsons, child abductions and rapes which, on the surface at least, appear to be unrelated. Three officers previously had been assigned to one difficult case together and have a history. Now each is working his own separate crime until the body of a young abducted girl shows up at an arson site. Now, everything becomes intertwined.

The novel is a classic police procedural, with detailed descriptions of each step along the way. The interactions of the protagonists and human emotions are finely told. The dialogue and writing are excellently presented and the story gripping. Further efforts in the series are greatly anticipated, and the book is highly recommended.

Pardon the pun. Three cops with a common bad case in their past. Three cases. Arson, rape, child abduction. The cases start to seemingly come together. The novel moves along briskly until about halfway through. Then it gets faster. I couldn't put it down from that point. This is Ms Ruttan's second novel, the first in a new series. It's even better than the first. I'm happily looking forward to the second at the end of the year. If you like a good thriller, you can't go wrong with this one. Buy it. It's well worth the price.

Arsons, rapes, an alleged rape, child abductions, murders, the bureaucratic politics within police and fire administrations and the various personalities that can either inhibit problem (and crime) solving or enhance it are intertwined (and very tidily so) in Sandra Ruttan's fast-paced thriller, What Burns Within. There are a lot of characters and relationships (father-son, ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/lovers which make the read all the more interesting). As background to the above is a mysterious case (something brutal enough for the referential teasers to enhance the overall intrigue of the story and personal dynamics between the main players - Nolan, Hart & Tain). The author uses clever hooks at the end of each transition between scenes that keep the reader engaged and wanting more (especially so in the last 40 pages which you will read without pause).

Are all the crimes related? What's religion got to do with it? Sometimes the harmless whackos you see on trains, in parks and at bazaars, say, aren't so harmless. If you think that's a tease, start reading What Burns Within and you'll quickly find yourself teased (and racing) to the gripping conclusion. And then you'll still want more.

Fortunately, we'll get it ... in November of this year ... The Frailty of Flesh ... book two in the Nolan, Hart & Tain series ... and the title is more than hook enough for this reader.

RCMP Constables Craig Nolan, Ashlyn Hart, and Tain (no first name) worked together on a case the year before that profoundly impacted all three. Since that time, they've not worked together. As the story opens, each is working a separate case: Nolan, a series of rapes, Hart a series of arson, and Tain a string of child abductions, one of which has turned to murder. As the separate investigations proceed, it becomes clear that they are linked in some fashion, bringing the three together again. What follows is a police procedural that meticulously follows the constables as they pursue leads, run down blind alleys, and eventually piece together the truth.

WHAT BURNS WITHIN is built on procedure, and offers the readers a sense of authenticity in its depiction of interdepartmental interplay and politics as the police and fire departments must cooperate, and hidden agendas try to dictate the investigation within the RCMP itself. The characters are well-drawn and believable, human and fallible rather than omnipotent superheroes. The one small problem I had with this book is that too little information of the previous case with the three protagonists was given. A bit more detail would have been nice.

That aside, this is an excellent book.

Book Club Review

What Burns Within

Sandra Ruttan

Our book club's book for December was WHAT BURNS WITHIN, by Sandra Ruttan. We chose this one as a result of wanting to read a police procedural. Many of us had read and loved the old procedurals by people like Dell Shannon and Ed McBain, and we were looking for something new, to see if/how the genre has evolved since Luis Mendoza and Steve Carella stopped having their adventures. And we were delighted to see that the genre does seem to have evolved quite a bit!

The setting is Vancouver, where three "bad boy" cops find themselves working on three separate cases (child abduction, arson, rape) that somehow keep getting intertwined. Each has a bad attitude in his own way: one is the son of a cop, so has a bit of a sense of entitlement; one is quite good looking, with the attitude that goes along with it; one is just a cranky and dedicated misanthrope. All three of them have resentment against one another due to a case gone bad in the past, but to solve this particular set of crimes, they have to put their differences aside, or at least learn how to work together.

This is truly a procedural, with all the intricate details of police work carefully interwoven with very suspenseful pacing. When comparing this to the older procedurals, we were impressed by how much the cast and story-telling has evolved. In Dell Shannon's books, the cops are all pretty likable, with nice wives and children at home; ditto for McBain. But the three cops here are far from generically nice. They are flawed, somewhat petty, conflicted, and definitely good at what they do; they just seem more REAL than the cops in the older procedurals. We also liked the way Ruttan tied everything together (for more details, you'll have to read the book...don't want to give any spoilers!). In so many of the old procedurals, there are just a dozen or so cases all going on simultaneously, without much connection (which we supposed is the way police work really is). But here, there are important links among the main cases, which make the book much more absorbing than the usual procedural, as well as giving it a feeling of being a more complete whole. This is actually evidenced by the many layers of the title, which actually means something--as opposed to the old procedurals that just used and re-used words like "death," "murder," and "felony."

This is the first book in the new series, and most of us said we would definitely be looking for the follow-up.

Ruttan excels at writing a crime procedural that twists and turns and is a page-turner. What I love most about her is characters are full of integrity, but she also livens things up with complicated sub-characters who act as villains and propel the action forward. It's also peppered through with social commentary as the characters interact with each other.

This is a great read for anyone who loves meaty crime fiction. Ruttan is a master at her craft.

In Vancouver, British Columbia the three constables had worked a difficult case together last year that turned nasty; each tacitly agreed to not see one another as a means of forgetting how dysfunctionally they performed. Now Craig Nolan looks into a serial killer case; Ashlyn Hart seeks a serial arsonist; and Tain works on a serial child abduction investigation.

However, each soon realizes that the seemingly three different investigations connect. If they are to prevent the next rape, inferno and kidnapping from happening, they must work as a team, but emotions run deep as the memories of last years fiasco still burns in the professional souls of Nolan, Hart and Tain.

This is a terrific Canadian police procedural that starts off with three distinct cases and the cops having a shared history that each wants to forget; avoidance of the others is the psychological mechanism used, but out of sight out of mind fails them. When the cases intertwine none want to work with one another, but as professionals they know they must to prevent the horrors that have occurred. Besides three lead police detectives, Sandra Ruffen merges her investigative subplots into an excellent police procedural.

Harriet Klausner