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3.0 out of 5 stars
Professional Work That Should Please Her Fans but Too Like Telly for Me, 13 Jan 2010
"Trial by Fire," is fifth in the Ali Reynolds mystery series penned by J.A. Jance, author ofCruel Intent. Jance is a Top 10 "New York Times" best selling author, and a veteran, prolific one, too, who has given us the Joanna Brady, and J.P. Beaumont detective series, in addition to the Reynolds books, and three interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family.
In "Trial by Fire," Ali lives in the very hot southwestern state of Arizona, in an area in which the desert shows itself at its most beautiful, around Sedona. She has formerly been a television news reporter and anchor; she's inherited some money from her womanizing, late husband (luckily, she didn't quite divorce him in time), and doesn't need the money. But she finds herself going back to work, as the new media relations consultant for the Yavapai County Police Department. This is, of course, immediately followed by a major crime - an arson-set fire, apparently the work of a group calling itself Earth Liberation Front. The fire has burned down two expensive houses in construction, and critically burned a local woman, a well-known, charitable benefactress, who is thought to have no enemies. While the burned woman, afflicted by amnesia, lies dying in a local hospital, she is tended by Sister Anselm, who has made its her life's' work to tend the dying, and is therefore locally known as the Angel of Death. Ali gets drawn into the case of the mysterious woman, working with, and without, agents from the federal ATF, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, that has taken an interest in the case because of its possible terrorist implications.
The book has good narrative, descriptive writing, and dialog. The plot is too television-y for my taste, but it will do. I am not fond of McMansions, and consider the loss of a couple of them a gain for the rest of us, nor am I fond of mysteries in which the villain explains it all for you at the end: I think the axiom is "show, don't tell." But Jance has delivered a professional piece of work that should please her many fans.
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by Nora Roberts
