(THE) FOURTH ANGEL, Suzanne Chazin, 2001
When an inferno in SoHo devours a small building and consumes fifty lives, Georgia Skeehan, a rookie FDNY fire marshal is thrust into command of the investigation.
Georgia suspects the fire may have been started by something New York has never seen before: HTA, a kitchen-sink concoction with the thermal power of rocket fuel. HTA fires, though rare over the last decade, are so ferocious that they can melt a building's steel and concrete framework in minutes.
Georgia soon unearths another startling possibility: the blaze may be connected to three other unsolved New York fires - and to several eerie, scripture-laden letters from a madman who calls himself the "Fourth Angel."
But before she can begin to unravel the clues, she is torn apart by the bizarre behavior of her partner and by the seeming betrayal of another marshal - a man she has begun to trust with her heart.
As Georgia battles for respect in the nearly all-male bastion of the FDNY, the "Fourth Angel" tightens his grip on his real quarry-and plots an even more catastrophic and fiery finale.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Suzanne Chazin is a former senior editor at Reader's Digest and an award-winning journalist. A member of the International Association of Arson Investigators, she has unusual access to the inner workings of the New York Fire Department - her husband is a high-ranking chief and nineteen-year veteran of the department. Her research has included extensive interviews with many of FDNY's forty-odd female members, as well as technical advice form inside and outside the department. Chazin is at work on a second novel featuring Georgia Skeehan.
6" x 9 1/2", 331 pages, hardcover BF9700 / $24.95