The Barnes & Noble Review
The first volume in a projected series, Suzanne Chazin's The Fourth Angel marks the debut of a potentially significant new voice. An intricately plotted account of murder, bureaucratic infighting, and serial arson, Chazin's novel illuminates the world of the professional firefighter with unobtrusive authority and the narrative facility of a born storyteller.
The heroine of The Fourth Angel is Georgia Skeehan, a rookie fire marshal for the New York City Fire Department (FDNY). A former firefighter, Georgia is the daughter of an FDNY hero who died in the line of duty. She is also a struggling single mother and a token female in an insular, traditionally male profession. Her already complicated life takes on a whole new level of complexity when she finds herself investigating, at considerable personal risk, a series of spectacularly destructive fires.
The novel begins with a graphic account of one of those fires, an eight-alarm blaze that destroys an entire office building in minutes, reaching an unprecedented temperature of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit and claiming more than 50 lives. Subsequent investigation reveals that a high-temperature accelerant (HTA) triggered the fire. (HTAs are highly specialized, extremely powerful accelerants roughly equivalent to rocket fuel.) Shortly afterward, Georgia learns that at least three other HTA-related fires have occurred in New York within the past few months. She also learns that the fires were accompanied by enigmatic letters invoking a fiery biblical figure from the Book of Revelations: the Fourth Angel.
Georgia's search for the Fourth Angel leads in several directions at once. One involves the wealthy industrialist whose building burned down in the opening sequence. Another concerns a resentful former FDNY dispatcher, a man with a grudge against the entire firefighting profession. A third involves a conspiracy of silence within the FDNY itself and points to the possible complicity of several fellow officers. In the end, Georgia uncovers a number of related solutions, then finds herself caught up in a frantic, race-against-time attempt to prevent a final, cataclysmic conflagration.
Although certain aspects of her story strain credibility, Chazin manages to hold things together with impressive narrative assurance. Her forensic expertise, her familiarity with the inner workings of a big-city fire department, her ability to convey the day-to-day stresses of a uniquely dangerous profession -- all of these elements coalesce to form a tense, cohesive melodrama that disturbs, enlightens, and entertains. (Bill Sheehan)
Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).