Flashover

Booklist

The appealing main character and the fast pace will keep readers turning the pages into the wee hours...

Bookpage

Deftly drawn, Flashover's believable characters drive the action to the very last page.

Publishers Weekly

In this eagerly anticipated but disappointing follow-up to The Fourth Angel, whatever foundations Chazin might have laid for a good thriller get buried beneath an exasperatingly overwritten and overwrought tale marred by contrived plot mechanisms. Fire marshal Georgia Skeehan and her veteran sidekick, Randy Carter, are called to investigate a fire that took the life of a retired doctor with a history of denying pensions to firefighters disabled in the line of duty. To complicate matters, Georgia's best friend, NYPD detective Connie Ruiz, confirms that there is talk of a bomb threat to a fuel pipeline under the city and that whoever is behind it knew the retired doctor. Fearing the fatal fire connects to other doctors formerly associated with the FDNY, they rush across town too late to save a second M.D. from a similar fate, and Mac Marenko, Georgia's supervisor and lover, accuses her of negligence. The entire situation ignites when Connie mysteriously disappears and Mac is found in her bullet-riddled, blood-splattered apartment, with no memory of what happened. Despite efforts to discourage her investigation, Georgia follows a trail of clues unearthing a connection between a toxic New York warehouse fire in the late 1970s and the current mayor's plans to erect a new football stadium on the site. Politics, greed, betrayal and cold-blooded murder: sadly, the elements of a dark, suspenseful story become ashes on a pyre of pulpy melodrama and artless crafting. And the somewhat tasteless however well-intended listing of all 343 members of the FDNY who died in the World Trade Center disaster may strike some as rather inappropriate for the dedication page of a commercial thriller. (May) Forecast: The Fourth Angel's success and FDNY's heightened fame will draw in new readers and bring back the old ones, but Georgia's sophomore adventure is a bumpy ride. Everything research, description, dialogue feels overdone, and could dampen sales.. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Spunky Fire Marshal Georgia Sheehan copes with a vengeful arsonist, a rocky love affair, a thorny career path, and tainted brass—in a satisfying sequel to last year's The Fourth Angel. Two doctors, known to each other, are killed by fires set in their respective homes only hours apart—puzzling fires, the precise causes not immediately apparent. But it isn't until Georgia learns more about how the docs were connected that she gets that first unsettling whiff of arson. Before retirement, both doctors served on the One-B Board, a panel viewed darkly throughout the New York City Fire Department for the austerity of its dealings with compensation matters. Further, her veteran partner informs her, both were notorious "for turning down injured firefighters for line-of-duty pensions." The idea that one of those rejected might be seeking vigilante justice is difficult to avoid. Nonetheless, Georgia learns that it's an idea anathema to several of her bosses for reasons that have to do with the way power corrupts. Soon enough, she's bumping into secret agendas every which way, and people who care about her are lining up to warn her off. Moving discreetly—she does understand that her career is at stake—she takes awhile to uncover the cover-up, but in the meantime there are all those auxiliary worries heaped on her plate. Like, for instance, the fact that she might be pregnant. Then, suddenly, Georgia's investigation, sub rosa as much of it is, takes a violent twist in a terrifying direction and she finds herself hunting for a vanished best friend, hoping desperately that she's still alive, and, if she isn't, that the murderer isn't who Georgia's scared stiff it might be. Authoritative settings—Chazinis married to a veteran firefighter—and an extremely likable heroine are enough to survive even a wildly melodramatic climax.