Book Review: The Smoke Room

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

The Smoke Room     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Earl Emerson
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Firefighting / Firefighters   Thriller
Ballantine, Jun 2005, $24.95, 320 pp.

Twenty-four years old Seattle firefighter Jason Gum and others from Engine 29 race to the scene of what has been described as an explosion at the home shared by forty something Iola Pederson and her daddy. Jason helps get Iola out of the house while daddy had already evacuated the house. Investigators conclude that the “bomb” was an award winning hog “jumping” from a plane at an estimated 11,000 feet.

Three weeks later Iola visits the fire station to personally thank Jason for her rescue. She seduces him in the back room while his team goes out on a fire call without him. His mate Ted Tronstad leaves behind Gum’s gear so that the firefighter can arrive on his own and thus lesson the dereliction of duty penalty. Ironically Gum becomes a hero though the couple he rescues fails to survive. Not long afterward, Tronstad has sacks filled with bearer bonds that he pulled from a fire. Tronstad, driver Robert Johnson, and Gum argue when Captain Sears catches them with the loot and threatens to expose them. Now they must rid themselves of Sears, but Johnson hesitates while Gum wants no part of the bonds except Tronstad blackmails him into either participating or at least remaining silent.

THE SMOKE ROOM is an exhilarating suspense thriller that twists and turns in ways readers will never suspect until the spin occurs as Jason understands but seems to never learn that his using the wrong head is destroying his morals. Readers will wonder what the key firefighting characters and Iola will do next and how likable Gum, who narrates the tale, will extract himself from his spiraling out of control woes. Earl Emerson provides the audience with a five alarm winner.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner