Vertical Burn - Softcover

This fact-based thriller is more facts than thrills, as Earl Emerson, a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department who's penned a series of solid mysteries featuring detective Thomas Black, puts his professional expertise front and center. That may be a plus, as the book's centerpiece is an arson fire in a skyscraper, a scene that brings the NYFD's heroism on 9/11 sadly to mind, giving this book in timeliness what it lacks in narrative drama. There's a plot somewhere here which has to do with a few venal, scheming bad guys in a (fictional) Seattle Fire Department who keep a hero fireman from upsetting their big score by discrediting him, and when that doesn't work, trying to kill him. But Emerson concentrates less on character, story, and pacing than on the highly technical details of urban firefighting, which, while perhaps widening Emerson's appeal to a general audience, may make this title less than compelling to the devoted fans of his mysteries. --Jane Adams

“Earl Emerson gives the reader enormous insight into the grueling and dangerous life of firefighters. Vertical Burn is a riveting story of conflict, deceit, murder, and redemption.”
–JOHN SAUL

“Earl Emerson’s plotting is original, suspenseful–so well done that the richness of his writing seems almost a bonus. . . . [He] has taken his place in the rarefied air of the best of the best.”
–ANN RULE

“Earl Emerson is a writer’s writer. In every book he tries something new, and he always comes up a winner.”
–AARON ELKINS

“Emerson writes with the richness and grace of a poet.”
–ROBERT CRAIS