Into The Inferno

by Earl Emerson

It was a routine accident. Two trucks collide on an icy freeway; Seattle firefighters are called; the spill is cleaned up; the damaged rigs are cleared; and the FD personnel return to their stations. Six months pass; then firefighters on the scene that day begin to falter and die. As his colleagues succumb one by one to the mysterious malady, firefighter Jim Swope realizes that he is in a fast race for his own survival.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Suspense

637 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Earl Emerson is a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of Vertical Burn, as well as the Thomas Black detective series. He lives in North Bend, Washington.

Reviews

[Jeff Dickison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Emerson is one of my favorite authors, but this book misses the mark. It treats a very serious subject (firefighters exposed to deadly substances) in a flippant and jocular fashion. It doesn't work at all. Not recommended.

[Steve Chaput · Rating 3 out of 5]

If a writer is doing his job, he’ll research his topic before writing. You can always tell the good ones because they never get the little details wrong.
Then you have writers like Earl Emerson. Emerson knows his subjects, in this case firefighters, because he himself is a member of the Seattle Fire Department. He knows what it is like to walk into a burning building. He doesn’t need to talk to an expert, because he lives this every day. Emerson is also a very talented writer.
Emerson has already created two different series in his almost twenty years of writing professionally. One features private detective Thomas Black and the other fireman/sheriff Mac Fontana. In this work he creates yet another character, much different, perhaps much more flawed than either of his better-known creations.
Jim Swope is a single father of two young daughters. He’s also one of a small number of full-time, paid members of a mostly volunteer fire department in the Pacific Northwest. While he likes to think of himself as a decent man, he is also battling elements of his past. His mother abandoned him to a religious zealot of a father, who forced the young Jim into the streets to proselytize. Running away to join the Army, Swope placed both emotional and physical distance between himself and his father. Now the old man spends his last years near comatose in a nearby nursing home, rarely if ever visited by his only son.
Swope awakens one morning to find the back of his hands covered in a waxy coating. He has the first sign of the “syndrome” and has a week until he will surely be no better than his father. How did this happen and can it be stopped?
Beginning the story almost at the last part of the tale, Emerson takes us back to where it started, or at least where Jim enters the picture. Emerson is able to engage the reader almost immediately, throwing us right into the middle of a situation that moves at a rapid pace, but never confuses or loses you along the way. Able to write quiet scenes of a father spending what may be his last hours with his daughters, Emerson can also write horrific scenes of fire and their aftermath.
As Jim looks into his ‘condition’, as well as the fate of several of his fellow firefighters, he discovers that there are people who will not only try to prevent him from discovering the cause, but are more than happy to end his life (and those of his family) to keep their secrets. Swope discovers that he can’t even trust those he has considered his friends, as well as finding that those he trusts the least may end up being his only salvation.
Jim finds that he and his co-workers are not the first to have suffered and that forces are working to keep that fact a secret, no matter how many lives may be ruined or ended. When your life is nearing its end we discover just what it is that is most important. Jim discovers that, even more than his own life, he fears for that of his two daughters.
Emerson fills his tale with a large cast of interesting, if not always likeable, characters. As the story progresses we begin to find that many of these folks are not who they appeared to be at first. Even Swope is unsure of who he can trust as he tries to unravel the riddle of his last days.

[Carole at From My Carolina Home · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping roller coaster ride of a story, with twists and turns as a man tries to solve a mystery of why firefighters are dying of a syndrome no one knows about. He finds himself as the next victim, with only a few days to figure it out, while a sinister entity tries to eliminate all the evidence and get rid of anyone asking questions. Truly, a complex and involved mystery, with a unique viewpoint, highly recommend!

[Richard Jr.]

This is a fast-moving firefighter book with a twist that may not be as rare as we would like to think. When a firefighter pulls open the door to a burning house, car or barn they have no way of knowing they aren't walking into a hell-hole of a some psycho's chemistry lab gone awry. What happens when this is a chemical so deadly and secret that it gets you killed to even know about it or try to investigate the deaths it causes? An ordinary winter pileup in the Pacific Northwest is sorted out by responding firefighters. It's only in the ensuing weeks and months that these same firefighters begin succumbing to a ten-day illness. Invariably, they descend into a vegetative state. Jim Swope picks up on the symptoms of his fellow firefighters as they either die by suicide or are interned into institutions. When Swope comes down with symptoms, he doesn't go down easily. As the symptoms creep through his body, time is running short. With Doctor Stepanie Riggs, he finds a lead in the case sending him on a race for life, knowing that in ten days he will be just one more mental case, or dead. As he closes in, the holders of the secret attempt to frame and then eliminate him and his family in accidents which will be ascribed to his mental incompetence. Author Earl Emerson has done a superb job of showing us the hazards of the firefighter's job. He has a great scenario for a story which is not far from reality. His descriptions of how easy it is for us to gloss over symptoms, or ascribe deaths to normal causes or suicide when no discernable symptoms of illness exist is scary! How easy it is for the big money, the big corporation, the big government, to cover up the big secret is also an eye-opener. Enjoy reading this. It's a quickie, but very thoughtful and worth-while.

[Terry Steinborn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Easily the weakest effort by Earl Emerson. He clearly knows his stuff about fires and fire fighting, this effort involves trying to sort out a "syndrome" affecting people exposed to a substance at a fire/accident scene. Unfortunately, the book is continuously bogged down in self-recriminations, self-pity and amateur psychoanalysis, which is used to fill out a very thin plot line. In addition to all this delaying and obfuscation, the non-fire related technical discussions are either very weak or ridiculously explained. Emerson is way out of his depth for much of this book. I really enjoyed his Thomas Black and Mac Fontana series; I hope his later books get back on track.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

JIm Swope is the acting Captain of a small, mainly volunteer fire department in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. The deparment starts losing members in a variety of ways. Swope realizes it all stems from one fire they fought together. Great characters, a little slow to get rolling, but once it does a very engaging read.

[Cindy Kester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Earl Emerson’s Inferno

I greatly enjoyed this book as I do all of Emerson’s. Not great literature but a fun, fast paced ride. Something is killing the firefighters of North Bend but what is it? Our protagonist searches for the answers before his own time runs out. Read and enjoy!

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 2003 non-series novel by Earl Emerson known for his Mac Fontana and Thomas Black series. After 1998, he stopped writing fiction series and produced 6 non-series firefighting thrillers between 2002 and 2008. In 2009, he published Cape Disappointment, a return to his Thomas Black series, his last book to date. His book jacket blurbs list him as a Lieutenant with the Seattle Fire Department.

Firefighting Thriller - Three firefighters were already dead or brain-dead when Stan Beebe told Lt Jim Swope he was at the end of a 7 day syndrome and then was killed in a car crash. Swope realizes he has the syndrome and Stephanie Riggs reveals her sister, Jim's ex-girlfriend is brain dead. Jim and Stephanie try to find the common cause and solution for the epidemic.

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Into the Inferno far exceeded my expectations. This is not a simple, slow novel about firefighters. Rather, it is a novel in which the characters have psychological depth (they are easy to connect with), the plot is intelligent, and the narrative is incredibly gripping. The way the narrator describes his context and the premise of the narrative were both well chosen and communicated. The surprises abound in the novel (Jim thinking his kids died when the house burnt down, is particularly memorable.) The ending was neat, as the author made it satisfying without making it seem cheesy or superficial.

[Joyce]

Plot is contrived, unscientific, and at times just plain cringe-worthy... but the thing that makes you keep reading is the voice of the protagonist. Whether you want to or not, this author ends up making you understand the inner thoughts of a "clueless nice guy" who is also white, working class, and a single father. If you've ever dated a guy of that description and were disappointed, this novel might in fact help you understand the bigger context he might be working within.

Not gonna lie, very religious readers might want to steer clear. Oddly enough, non-believers might actually come closer to understanding the lingering effects of youthful religious indoctrination.

[Donna Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not many of the scary books I read give me bad dreams, but I had to stop reading this at bedtime and reserve it for other times instead. Emerson, himself a firefighter, knows exactly what can go wrong in a fire, and he spins a riveting adrenaline rush of a tale that is nearly impossible to put down till the last page has been turned.

Novels with supernatural boogeymen do not bother me. I know that they are fictional. This was entertaining, yet also disturbing, because it could have happened. It really could.

Searing, and a must-read for those who like thrillers and mysteries.

[Cat. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good story. The main character is a single-father firefighter at a small department who, along with 5 or 6 other people, is exposed to a toxic spill in a truck accident. Six weeks later, everyone starts getting mildly sick which quickly blossoms and turns fatal--at least for the brain--in 7 days. With help from his girlfriend's sister, he figures out what happened, and barely (really, barely!), finds a cure for the 2 people--himself and another firefighter--who haven't already gone braid-dead. Different from Emerson's other books, but still good.

[Chris Holling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be a bit biased toward this book. This is a story of a Firefighter dealing with his own battles as well as battles of the Fire Department. He goes on a call that changes himself and his whole crew from that day on. While this is approached as fiction, the reality of it by the author due to him being a firefighter himself is phenomenal. It is a good story also one of firefighter's worst nightmares.

[Bree · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book started off slow for me - I wanted to like it but he seemed to ramble on and on about nothing. After I got used to the writing style, and as the plot picked up as his time ran out, I really enjoyed the book. The ending was a bit confusing...I actually have to go back and read it now that I'm a bit more awake. Overall, a good read, though.

[Debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firefighter Jim Swope comes down with a mysterious illness--one that has killed or left brain dead every other member of a fire call months earlier. Turns out, the illness gives you only 7 days to live--and he's on day 3 already!

[Deborah P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really quick, action-packed read with a really likeable main character.