Firetrap » (Reprint)

Earl Emerson is a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department. He is the Shamus Award—winning author of The Smoke Room, Vertical Burn, Into the Inferno, and Pyro, as well as the Thomas Black detective series, which includes The Rainy City, Poverty Bay, Nervous Laughter, Fat Tuesday, Deviant Behavior, Yellow Dog Party, The Portland Laugher, The Vanishing Smile, The Million-Dollar Tattoo, Deception Pass, and Catfish Café. He lives in North Bend, Washington. Visit the author’s website at www.EarlEmerson.com.


From the Hardcover edition.

No one writes with the power, authority, and poetry that Earl Emerson has demonstrated in his action-packed novels about fire and the people who make their living fighting it. In Firetrap, Trey Brown is a man tormented by race, by family, and now by a political firestorm that has erupted because fourteen people died in an illegal Seattle nightclub . . . and someone must take the fall.

Captain Trey Brown is a black man in a Seattle fire department where the color of his skin keeps him largely on the outside looking in. As a child, Trey was adopted by a white family whose children were bred for wealth and power–but now Trey simply does his job, rides his Harley, and lives in bitter solitude. Then the Z-Club goes up in flames, killing more than a dozen people, all of them black, and the city's African American community demands to know: Did these people die because of their skin color?

Jamie Estevez, the beautiful, ambitious reporter who becomes Trey's partner in the investigation, is everything Trey is not. Outgoing and gregarious, she tries to bring the lone-wolf fireman back into the world. But as their relationship heats up, Trey is forced to relive a painful episode from his past, when he was accused of a horrible crime and shunned by his adoptive parents. Suddenly, two mysteries–one of passion and family, the other of fire and murder–are unraveling around Trey. But so is everything he has done to protect himself. . . .

Firetrap is vintage Earl Emerson: a gritty, emotionally charged novel set in a world of camaraderie and urban chaos, where one man has been a hero, a villain, and a victim–and hasn’t even faced the deadliestdanger yet.


From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

This uneven stand-alone suspense novel from Seattle fire lieutenant Emerson (The Smoke Room) opens promisingly with the gritty first-person narration of Capt. Trey Brown, a Seattle firefighter, touching on past trauma that led to his estrangement from his family. Brown, one of the few African-Americans in the department's leadership, has just survived a fatal fire (with echoes of the Bronx's Happy Land tragedy) that has sparked citywide riots incited by suspicions that African-American victims were left to die by the Seattle Fire Department. Unfortunately, Emerson switches narrators, most often alternating Brown's perspective with that of Jamie Estevez, the gorgeous local TV journalist who's independently investigating the city's response to the blaze. The predictable romantic tension between Brown and Estevez doesn't generate much heat, and the revelations of the forces behind the loss of life will surprise few. Still, the strong first chapter should reassure longtime fans and convince new readers to give Emerson another chance. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.