Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Oct 2005, 304 pages
Paperback:
Oct 2006, 352 pages
From the book jacket:
Winter is on the wane in northwestern
Vermont. The moon hangs bright and cold in
the silvery night sky over hundreds of
square miles of a peaceful, dormant
landscape of dairy farms. Young Bobby Cutts
enters the family barn to tend to the beasts
within…and encounters a nightmare. Suddenly
surrounded by bolts of fire, Bobby and the
entire herd perish in a stampeding, hellish
circle of flames.
Called to the scene to investigate, Joe
Gunther instantly recognizes arson. But by
whom? And for what possible reason? There is
little insurance, the family is loving and
tightly knit, and there are few neighborhood
animosities.
Yet murder this is, and Gunther quickly
discovers that someone is wreaking havoc
across the bucolic farmlands surrounding the
town of St. Albans. Somewhere in the dense
social fabric of the community, in the
hearts and souls of Bobby's family, and in
the cutthroat farming business underneath
the region's placid exterior are the truths
Joe Gunther and his team must ferret out.
But what looked like a local case is about
to take them from the barns of Vermont to
the gritty streets of Newark, New Jersey.
Comment: Joe Gunther made his first
appearance in Open Season (1988) as a
police lieutenant in Vermont. 16 books
later he's still in Vermont (but now second
in command) and still solving crimes by "quietly,
relentlessly stripping away the veneer to
reveal motives like envy and rancor,
disappointment and bitterness."
Unfortunately he's pretty dense when it
comes to figuring out his own relationships,
and his long-time relationship with State
Senator Gail Zigman is on the rocks, so the
question is not so much whether Joe will
catch the killer, but whether he will lose a
lover......
As Kirkus Reviews so aptly puts it,
"the most understated cop in crime fiction
racks up a satisfying 16th in a series that
marches confidently to its own unhurried
beat." - Kirkus Reviews.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in November 2005, and has been updated for the
October 2006 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
If you liked St Albans Fire, try these:
by Ian Rankin
Published 2005
Rebus finds himself against seemingly insurmountable odds, asking himself what drives a man to kill - is it a matter of revenge, or a question of blood?
by Peter Robinson
Published 2004
Detective Inspector Alan Banks has never forgotten the disappearance and presumed death of his best friend in the summer of 1965. When the tragic bones are shockingly unearthed and identified more than 35 years later, the imagined skeleton in the detective's closet becomes all too real and he is drawn into an investigation that hits ...
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
