Review by Booklist Review
Arson investigator Walter Sharpe--along with his perhaps-too-eager partner Andrew Walker (a former US marshal)--returns in the second book in a series that promises to be a lot of fun. A new housing development is the site of seemingly inexplicable house fires. The homes are empty, but still: arson is arson, and the mystery needs to be solved. When yet another fire leaves behind a smoldering corpse, Walter and Andrew team up with a couple of homicide cops to find out what happened. They turn up a lot of frightening answers. Malibu Burning, 2023, which launched the Sharpe and Walker series, was an excellent novel; this one's even better. Goldberg, who wrote extensively for television before segueing into novel-writing, brings a screenwriter's sense of pace and character to the story, making it a pure pleasure to read. Highly recommendable.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Goldberg's crafty second procedural featuring L.A. arson investigators Walter Sharpe and Andrew Walker (after Malibu Burning) finds the partners looking into a pair of suspicious blazes. First, they're called to the scene of a fire at an unoccupied new home. Before they can investigate thoroughly, Sharpe and Walker are called to a nearby house that has burned down with a male corpse inside. That discovery brings homicide detective Eve Ronin (who anchors a different Goldberg series) and her sidekick, Duncan Pavone, into the investigation. Together, all four try to determine whether the dead man--Patrick Lopresti, who has a bullet wound in his head in addition to severe burns--was murdered or took his own life. Soon, they learn Lopresti worked for a biotech firm developing "biological defenses against emerging infectious diseases," and that he was having an affair with his colleague Justine Bryce, who was accidentally infected with a supervirus and has since gone missing. As the four search for Justine, they unravel a deadly conspiracy that links back to Sharpe and Walker's initial investigation. Goldberg manages to give each of his four leads their due while keeping the investigation's fuse burning bright. This series deserves a long life. Agent: Amy Tannenbaum, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A series of suspicious fires proves to be only the tip of the iceberg in Goldberg's latest dispatch from the San Fernando Valley. L.A. County Sheriff's Department arson investigator Walter Sharpe and his gung-ho new partner, Andrew Walker, are called to the Chatsworth Nature Preserve, where someone has set a Toyota Camry ablaze. Soon afterward, following the trail of devastation left by a deadly virus that's disappeared from Triax Biotech, homicide detectives Duncan Pavone, back from retirement, and Eve Ronin, who's recently had a TV series based on her work, track down Triax microbiologist Patrick Lopresti, only to watch his house explode in a fireball before their eyes, leaving Lopresti inside, shot in the head in a bizarre apparent suicide. Justine Bryce, Lopresti's lover and presumed partner in crime who's also been exposed to the virus, has reacted by going on the lam. Even when the cops confront her, she refuses to surrender for fear of infecting someone else. In the meantime, Sharpe and Walker have uncovered an epidemic of house fires in and around the Twin Lakes development blamed on the remarkably similar failures of domestic electrical appliances. There's clearly a mastermind behind this crime wave. But what's the connection between this mastermind and the Triax employee who's blown up his own house rather than give himself up along with the virus? The path to answers and convictions leads to a San Diego SciCon in which Eve and Walker dress up as Wonder Woman and the Mandalorian in order to approach their suspect without arousing any suspicion and, incidentally, to provide a suitably colorful not-quite-finale to this knockabout procedural. Pure enjoyment for anyone who doesn't happen to own a home in the Valley. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
