Well, I think I'm losing it! I honestly can't recall whether or not I've already posted my review for INTO THE INFERNO (although it was sent off to Joe Bob). Just in case I did screw up and already posted it, my apologies. If this IS the first time I hope you read and enjoy, since the book is definetly recommended.

INTO THE INFERNO – by Earl Emerson; Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0-345-44591-0

If a writer is doing his job properly, he or she will research their topic before writing. Possibly, if they are ‘good writers’ they will speak to people working in the occupations they are writing about and possibly have one of these folks act as an advisor, so they won’t get the little details wrong. Now if these ‘good writers’ are also talented they just might bring a sense of realism to their stories.

Then you have writers like Earl Emerson. Emerson knows his subjects, in this case firefighters, because he himself is a member of the Seattle Fire Department. He knows what it is like to walk into a burning building, with the possibility of not walking back out something that is in the back of his mind. He doesn’t need to talk to an expert, because he lives this every day. Emerson is also a very talented writer and creates a reality in the novels he writes.

Emerson has already created two different series in his almost twenty years of writing professionally. One features private detective Thomas Black and the other fireman/sheriff Mac Fontana. In this work he creates yet another character, much different, perhaps much more flawed than either of his better-known creations.

Jim Swope is a single father of two young daughters. He’s also one of a small number of full-time, paid members of a mostly volunteer fire department in the Pacific Northwest. While he likes to think of himself as a decent man, he is also battling elements of his own past. His mother abandoned him to a religious zealot of a father, who forced the young Jim unto the streets to proselytize. Running away to join the Army, Swope placed both emotional and physical distance between himself and his father. Now the old man spends his last years near comatose in a nearby nursing home, rarely if ever visited by his only son.

Swope awakens one morning to find he back of his hands covered in a waxy coating. He has the first sign of the ‘syndrome’ and has a week until he will surely be no better than his father. How did this happen and can it be stopped?

Beginning the story almost at the last part of the tale, Emerson takes us back to where it started, or at least where Jim enters the picture. Emerson is able to engage the reader almost immediately, throwing us right into the middle of a situation that moves at a rapid pace, but never confuses or loses you along the way. Able to write quiet scenes of a father spending what may be his last hours with his daughters, Emerson can also write horrific scenes of fire and their aftermath.

Emerson fills his tale with a large cast of interesting, if not always likable characters. As the story progresses we begin to find that many of these folks are not who they appeared to be at first. Even Swope is unsure of who he can trust as he tries to unravel the riddle of his last days. Three and a half stars.