Fire Point: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

by John Smolens (Author) "IF HE HAD A RELIGION, it was that things in this world ought to be plumb, level, and square..." (more)
Key Phrases: Frank Colby, Whitefish Harbor, Buzz Gagnon (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Innocent lovers are subjected to an onslaught of jealousy and hostility on Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula in a sensitively observed, mesmerizing fourth novel that builds in fury as inexorably and stunningly as a Lake Superior storm. Smalltown gossip has plagued Hannah LeClair ever since she was forced to have an abortion and drop out of high school after being abandoned by her boyfriend, Sean Colby. His father, Frank, is the town cop, and the force behind Sean's sudden enlistment in the army. Already considered Whitefish Harbor's "town slut" at 19, Hannah meets and falls in love with Martin Reed, a Chicagoan 10 years her senior. But soon enough, Sean returns, summarily discharged after an incident involving an Italian woman. Installed by his father as a summer cop, Sean pursues Hannah; when she rejects his advances, he learns of her affair and begins a relentless campaign of stalking and harassing Martin, which includes two attempts to burn down the old house Martin is restoring. When Frank confronts him, Sean smashes the headlight of the town patrol car, an incident reported by witnesses; the resulting charges of nepotism put Frank's long-held position in the community in jeopardy. The violence escalates in this gripping novel by the author of Cold, as father and son deem Martin a mortal enemy. Readers may devour this in one sitting, and the startling denouement will keep them rapt to the chilling end.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Tensions simmer among the residents of a small resort town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula until a young man from Chicago moves in and stirs the situation to a boil. After Martin Reed buys and restores a dilapidated house, he becomes involved with 19-year-old Hannah LeClaire, who is finishing high school after complications from an abortion. Even though Hannah is nearly a decade younger than Martin, their romance quickly heats up. But then Sean Colby, the classmate who fled into the army after getting Hannah pregnant, returns to town; soon, Martin and Hannah face a growing threat from Sean and his policeman father. Smolens proves especially adept at illustrating the tenuous alliances and small fissures that form between townies when the tourists have all gone home. In a quiet, assured fashion, he sets up a series of inevitable confrontations that don't usually turn out the way one would expect--just like in real life. Fans of Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods will find much to like here. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books; 1 edition (August 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609611046
• ISBN-13: 978-0609611043
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #543,695 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real thiller, August 30, 2004

By	Eric Marmont (Gilbert, AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Another winner from John Smolens. A real thiller that brings out the best in mankind, love and brutality. A story based in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A young man returns home after being discharged from the military early, to find his ex-girlfriend has taken up with an olderman who really is an outcast from the Chicago area. The young man finds that he can't handle that she is in love with someone else, and starts in motion a series of violent acts. Mr. Smolens spells out the story in cisp writing style, and with his detail descriptive this story becomes an outstanding thriller. After reading three of Mr. Smolen's books, I feel that he is one of America's most outstanding writers, and one that should have enjoyed much more commerical success.

5.0 out of 5 stars A very literary edge-of-your-seat page-turning gem, April 6, 2008

By	Timothy J. Bazzett "ReedCityBoy" (Reed City, MI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Fire Point: A Novel of Suspense (Paperback)

A few years ago I sat next to John Smolens at a table in the "authors tent" at the annual Wild Blueberry Festival in Paradise, Michigan, near the top of the eastern U.P. It seemed an unlikely locale for the world-wide release of his latest novel, "Fire Point". But then, perhaps it wasn't after all. Smolens is an English professor at Northern Michigan University, and the setting for his new book is, once again, the U.P. The town, Whitefish Harbor, is fictional. As he did in his previous novel, "Cold", Smolens tantalizes readers like me who read with an atlas close at hand with town names that are "almost" real, employing parts of real place names, but putting them in slightly the wrong place. All you know for sure is that the story takes place somewhere near Marquette, on the shores of Lake Superior.
Whitefish Harbor, like the real villages of Paradise, Trout Lake or Grand Marais, is instantly recognizable as one of those small, isolated often soul-deadening communities surrounded by sand, swamps and second-growth scrub pine forests, which survives mostly on the tourist trade during the brief months of summer. This insular small-town setting is key to the novel's events (which take place over a six-month period from April to September), as they delicately and inevitably unfold in the inimitable prose style Smolens has established and perfected in his earlier work. Employment opportunities are few and severely limited. A key character is introduced in the following manner: "Places like Whitefish Harbor send kids like Sean Colby out into the world after high school. They go to college, they enlist in the service."
Sean Colby could easily be listed as the villain of "Fire Point", but that would be oversimplifying an extremely intricate feat of story-telling, because as the plot evolves, you learn a bit about his childhood and are privy to a not very pretty picture of his parents' marriage and their own particular disappointments and failings. You quickly come to the conclusion that there are no clear-cut good guys or bad guys in this tale, only regular people with all the usual complexities who are trying to find their place in a life they didn't necessarily choose.
Hannah LeClaire, a mature 19 year-old, is the girl all the boys and men in town follow longingly with their eyes, but she had given herself, too soon, to Sean Colby the previous year. A fatherless loner herself, Hannah was drawn to Sean's "leader of the pack" aura. But something was "twisted" in Sean, and when Hannah became pregnant, he gave in to the "solution" proposed by his parents, then disappeared into the army. Ten months later, discharged early for not yet clear reasons, Sean shows up back in Whitefish Harbor and begins stalking Hannah and her new boyfriend, 29 year-old Martin Reed, a Chicago man who had spent his childhood summers in the village, his mother's hometown.
Early on in the narrative, Reed would appear to be the obvious hero of the piece, but nothing is ever quite what it appears to be in Smolens' fiction. Likely heroes become victims and unlikely people become heroes.
Joseph "Pearly" Blankenship Jr., 44 years old, part Ojibwa Indian, loner, barfly, and sometime carpenter, is such an unlikely hero. Involved in an inertia-fed listless affair with a local bartender, who is yet another single mom in a sea of failed relationships, Pearly is almost a stereotypical product of his town, except for one thing. He reads. Probably the most prolific borrower from the town library, he knows his Shakespeare, as well as when to use "whom vs. who." An anomaly in a town of non-readers and small-minded failures, Pearly has become the primary "usual suspect" any time a civic prank or petty crime occurs. He is regularly detained, harrassed and humiliated by Frank Colby, Sean's father and a frustrated long-time cop who knows he will never be chief of police. That post is held by Buzz Gagnon, an overweight cartoon of a law enforcement officer who can't stop himself from snacking on whatever is at hand as he questions suspects and is more concerned with maintaining the status quo than with solving crimes. Hounded by Colby, Pearly is regularly defended by Owen Nault III, who, like Frank Colby, grew up in Whitefish Harbor with Pearly. Owen went away to college and law school, but ended up back in the family practice, doomed to defend people like Pearly who can't afford lawyers, so he has learned to take his fees in trade -- a remodeled bathroom or a properly hung door. And even at that, Naught undoubtedly gets the better end of the deal, since Pearly is, despite his questionable reputation, a very competent carpenter whose personal philosophy, if he has one, is "that things in this world ought to be plumb, level, and square, but seldom are."
Pearly is hired by Martin (a distant cousin) to help restore a large old house in town where Martin and Hannah plan to live and rent the two upper floors for income. The jealously obsessive Sean, hired by the village as a summer cop, lurks about the fringes of their lives and attempts, with increasingly violent acts of vandalism and sabotage, to disrupt their plans.
Every detail and every character fit seamlessly into the rapidly spiraling events that draw the reader full bore into the escalating violence that moves inexorably toward an unexpected and shocking climax Smolens' writing is spare and direct, with that stripped-to-the-bone clarity and precision that his readers have come to expect. "Fire Point" is not just another thriller, or "a novel of suspense", as its jacket proclaims. It is finely crafted, good -- perhaps even great -- literature. Pearly Blankenship and Hannah LeClaire are characters who will stay with you for a long time after closing the covers. - Tim Bazzett, author of Love, War & Polio (RatholeBooks.com)

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars fire point, March 26, 2006

By	Kitty A. Dremann - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One of the most sickening endings I have ever read where the villian (Sean) not only avoids his just deserts but is rewarded with the prospect that he will eventually get what he has destroyed so many lives for - his old flame! What was the author thinking? People really do like to think that justice will somehow prevail and therefore the creepiness of the last two paragraphs was very disturbing. What a waste of time not to mention the bad taste the reader is left with. This was the first and last book by Smolens I will ever read.