Chasing Fire
Nora Roberts

Piatkus (Little, Brown)
14 April 2011/ ISBN 9780749952976
Mystery / Contemporary /Montana
Amazon US || UK

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

Rowan Tripp is a forest fire fighter just like her father, and totally dedicated to her work. She seems to lead a charmed life as she puts herself in danger over and over again, but she is haunted by her failure to save the life of her jump partner Jim. As she trains the latest raw recruits she finds herself falling for handsome Gull Curry, but it is her rule that she never sleeps with anybody she works with. Then she has more to worry about, as somebody seems to have in it for the whole team and Rowan in particular. Could it be that somebody blames her for Jim’s untimely death?

Nobody does romantic suspense quite like Nora Roberts these days, and a glance at her backlist shows how varied her output has been. This book plunges the reader into the unfamiliar world of forest fire fighting, and depicts the lives of a group of dedicated people who save the lives of others while getting a thrill from danger. Any book dealing with death threats, firefighting and action sounds pretty exciting, but the sheer length of this book rather diluted this and at times the story tread water. I also wanted to feel more present at the fires, smell the smoke and sense the adrenalin pumping but this seemed to be curiously absent, with much of the imagery poetic, but elusive and not evocative. As the book progresses it gathers momentum, and roars to its climax in the last few pages. I felt that if only it hadn’t been quite so long I would have put it down feeling that I had experienced everything promised, and there is still much to enjoy in here. Chiefly the relationships between the various characters, which is excellently done, and a hallmark of Ms. Roberts’ books. She also portrayed the sense of danger and thrill as the team trained, and brought the place where they all lived to life. An interesting and well worth sticking with novel that lets the reader see into a world I hadn’t read about before.