Going Crazy in Public: A Mac Fontana Mystery - Hardcover

In this chatty whodunit, fire chief Mac Fontana (Morons and Madmen), a no-nonsense and likable guy, takes on a serial arsonist who is toasting tiny Staircase, Wash., one corner at a time. The fires are only a nuisance at first, but the horizon darkens with the first fire fatality in the town's 100-year history. Residents assume the culprit is the same one who has been hard at work in nearby Seattle. But after Fontana's son is endangered by one of the blazes, the chief is convinced the arsonist is someone from Staircase-maybe someone in his department-with a grudge against him. There are plenty of candidates: the firefighter who didn't make it onto the force because his job was given to a woman; the pompous town safety director who is after Fontana's job. Most intriguing of all, at least to the townspeople and the national media, is the possibility that the fires are being set by the young son of a movie star who has come to Staircase to escape her celebrity. Emerson, himself a Seattle firefighter, makes a convincing case that fire departments aren't just a bunch of guys and a couple of dalmations hanging out at the station-although Fontana can chew the fat with the best of them. In his view, arsonists may be a step or two above the tabloid press. The humor is of the physical sort, the characters are refreshingly unromantic and the action will leave readers with a compulsion to check their smoke detector batteries regularly.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Despite an outbreak of arson in Staircase, Wash., it looks for a while as if the dramatic high points of fire chief Mac Fontana's summer will be a fire drill at the local nudist colony and Fontana's run-in with a pistol-packing former actress with whom gossip soon, and inaccurately, links him romantically. But that's before there are two suspicious blazes the same night--and one of them, in the Cove Road house where Fontana's son Brendan is staying, claims the life of ancient Lorraine Gilliam (Staircase's first fire fatality in a century, Fontana tells a pesky freelance reporter, who promptly crucifies him in the Seattle Times). Could the arsonist be the bumptious hero who led five victims out of the Cove Road fire? The despised Staircase safety director who's had Fontana in his sights forever? The sometime volunteer who hadn't answered his pager ever since flunking the fire-department exam--until the recent arson rash brought him back? Or (as seems increasingly likely) is everybody in Staircase--from the actress's retarded son to the wealthy couple whose every possession seems combustible--getting into the act? Fontana's fourth (Morons and Madmen, 1993, etc.) features droll small-town backchat and some great fires--even if too many torchers do spoil the blaze. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.