"A terrific romantic suspense"

The Flamemaster feels quite good as he dials from a distance the explosion that enables him to watch the fire that burns Paddy's Pig Restaurant and Dance Club. The Somersett, South Carolina fire department struggles with the blaze in which rescue team member Daniel McGee dies in the inferno. His last message is to his fiancé, firefighter Tess Gannon that he loves her.

Two years later, former ATF Agent Gage O'Halloran learns the impossible that the Flamemaster lit a blaze in South Carolina. Gage knows that Randolph Griffith is locked away in prison so a copy cat is out there. Arson investigator Tess looks at a new fire in which a woman died while being tied to a bed when Gage arrives and pompously tries to take over. He thinks a link exists between a strip joint fire, a deadly warehouse inferno, and the latest arson-homicide. Gage informs Tess that he wants sex with her, but also says the rope is the not known signature of the Flamemaster who is in San Quentin. They work together trying to learn who the copycat is and how did this person find insider information on the Flamemaster even as their attraction burns each other with desire.

Mindful of Kathryn Shay's fabulous firefighter's series, BLAZE is a terrific romantic suspense that keeps the audience anticipating a showdown, but wondering with whom. The lead couple need one another; however he at first sounds crass and she has not gotten past her loss, so her leaping into bed with him right away seems off kilter; their reasons to avoid commitments on the other hand augments this exciting fiery intrigue.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 28, 2005

Summary

In bestseller Ross's intense, seamlessly plotted novel of romantic suspense, Tess Gannon, who's been a fire investigator in Somersett, S.C., since her firefighter fiancé, Danny, died two years earlier in a mill fire, teams up with former ATF Special Agent Gage O'Halloran, a widower, to look into an apartment fire that Gage believes was set by a serial arsonist. As Tess and Gage try to solve the arson case, they engage in sizzling foreplay, rendered all the more powerful by the excess emotional baggage that each carries. Gage's overt sexual references, rather than being offensive, seem to match his personality, that of a devil-may-care cowboy who lives for the moment. He's also a talented investigator who becomes immersed in the captivating mystery surrounding the serial arsons, which may be connected to the mill fire that killed Danny. Though the man known as the Flamemaster, who murdered Gage's wife, is now in San Quentin, this new arsonist is a clever copycat, writing threatening letters to the Somersett newspaper signed "Flamemaster." Ross (Out of the Mist) keeps the heat on right to the last page.