FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE CARTEL.When Jack Wade is called in to examine a suspicious arson claim, he follows the evidence into the crime infested inferno of the California underworld. Jack Wade was the rising star of the Orange County Sheriffs Department’s arson unit, but a minor scandal cost him everything, except his encyclopedic knowledge of fire. Now working as an insurance claims … knowledge of fire. Now working as an insurance claims investigator, Jack is called in to examine a suspicious claim: within hours of a disastrous blaze tearing through a wing of real estate mogul Nicky Vale’s house— causing the horrific death of his young wife—he filed a 3 million-dollar insurance claim. The tracks of the fire tell Jack that something’s wrong, and as he follows the evidence the case grows to involve the Russian mob, Vietnamese gangs, real estate scams, counterfeiting and corporate corruption.
Things get so hot and deadly that Jack might not make it out alive . . . that is until he decides to fight fire with fire.
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California Fire and Life is the book that comes right after The Death and Life of Bobby Z in Winslow’s oeuvre, toward which I was semi-lukewarm, and is a couple back from The Dawn Patrol, which I liked a bit. In it, Winslow shows the growth curve that eventually landed him with Savages, which is the good news here.
Jack Wade isn’t quite the archetypical Winslow surfer-slacker semi-hero; he’s actually fully employed as a fire claims adjuster with the titular insurance company, and is even good at it, something Winslow usually reserves for his criminals. Wade’s assigned to investigate a fire in the mansion of megarich property developer Nicky Vale. The fire not only caused seven figures in damage, but it killed Vale’s uber-hot wife. This turns out to be one of those cases that everyone tells Our Hero to not investigate, but he does anyway, and finds out that — shock horror! — nothing’s as it seems.
The things Winslow did well in the other books, he does well here, too. He nails the vibe of late-20th-Century Dana Point and Laguna. The settings are drawn with enough detail for even the most committed flatlander to picture in his/her mind’s eye. The dialog is naturalistic and sounds much like what you’d expect coming from characters such as these. The prose is loose-limbed, opinionated, profane, and bursting with color, while not quite as out-there as was Savages. Some of the supporting cast (including Wade’s boss and his lost love) are fully-realized characters, something Bobby Z had a problem accomplishing, and the author left out a few of his stock character types, which is also commendable. The bad guys are, as usual, very, very bad, but this time there’s a reason for it, unlike in The Dawn Patrol, where they were bad because that’s what they were.
Even though he’s now a working stiff, Wade has the requisite painful, soiled past, complete with lost love. He’s not quite as personable as Boone Daniels or Tim Kearney; he’s more about competence than charm, which is refreshing. It’s interesting to watch him do his very technical thing and use science to tease out the clues to the crime. Fans of forensic procedurals might actually dig this novel. Winslow gives us a fair amount of background in arson investigation (possibly more than strictly necessary) disguised as the saga of Wade going through the academy in his past life. When something breaks right for Wade, it’s usually because he earns it, another nice change from Bobby Z.
Where’d the fifth star go? When Winslow gives you backstory, he doesn’t sprinkle it out with a teaspoon — you get chapters of backstory, and while it’s relatively entertaining to read, it stops the story cold. Wade has a couple of genre-required pointless confrontations with Vale that just make Our Hero look like a dolt. The ending turns into a near-literal Götterdämmerung and a few too many of the plot problems become, shall we say, self-correcting.
California Fire and Life isn’t a bad way to become acquainted with Winslow, and is perhaps a better start than Bobby Z for established fans to explore the roots of his SoCal/surfer noir works. The arson angle makes for a different sort of crime story, and the words go down like a fresh margarita. If you’ve read later Winslow and haven’t picked up this earlier book yet, get to it.
Winslow pulls off the near-miraculous trick of turning an insurance adjuster into a super-cool action in hero. A tough idealist in the Marlowe mode, Jack Wade is a great, funny, hard-ass who says what he thinks despite the consequences. The story gets very complicated, but Winslow keeps you grounded, and the last chapters won’t let you take a break. The dialogue is snappy and at times, very funny, and you also get a murder mystery wrapped up in a fascinating primer on fire.