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FLASH POINT
by Nancy Baker Jacobs
Perseverance Press, October 2002
216 pages
$13.95
ISBN: 1880284561


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In several cases, the body of a woman is found at the center of what is obviously a very hot fire. In all cases, the woman was apparently unmarried, and the mother of a newborn daughter. Also in all cases, the baby is missing. Susan Kim Delancey, daughter of an American GI and a Korean woman, divorced mother of a teenage son, is California's newest politically appointed "arson czar."

As a woman of mixed race, appointed by a woman governor, she is up against lots of prejudice, but she persists, especially in this new series of attacks. Her underfunded office consists of herself, gay ex-firefighter Ricky Lindemann, and a part time mouthy secretary.

There are graphic descriptions of the fire scene, and lots of background on the protagonists, but they never seem to come really alive. The plot wends its way to a conclusion in which the heroine triumphs, but this book reads like the treatment for a Lifetime Movie of the Week, andm in fact, I'm sending this copy on to my daughter who is a member of the Directors' Guild in Hollywood. The characters are Susan, a mixed race single mother, Max, her teen age wannabe rock musician son, her humorless ex-husband, the doctor she's dating, her assistant and his partner who want to adopt a baby, the nasty journalists, and the prejudiced cops. And Susan is the one who puts all the clues together, after putting her son in jeopardy, and finally uncovers the culprit. Nancy Baker Jacobs has written eleven previous crime novels, including the Devon MacDonald private eye series, but this one reads like a first novel

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, July 2002

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