The Fourth Angel by Suzanne Chazin (
SYKM,
Wikipedia) is the 1st in her Georgia Skeehan series of investigative mystery/suspense thrillers starring the eponymous New York City rookie fire marshal, this installment featuring a deadly fire which leads to uncovering connections with prior unsolved cases with a taunting serial arsonist which in turn leads to a tangled web of internal fire department politics and potential cover-ups, as they so often do, with possible bonus romantic elements, free courtesy of publisher Diversion Books, who are e-printing it from its 2001 Putnam hardcover edition.
The author received a collective 2003 "Washington Irving Children's Book Choice Awards" for the first two books in this series, according to Wikipedia, though the actual customer reviews seem pretty mixed and I've no idea how age-appropriate this may or may not be, so Gentle Reader Passing This On To The Kiddies discretion is advised.
Currently free @
Amazon (available to Canadians & in the
UK) &
iTunes (available to Canadians and many other regions worldwide, as Diversion freebies often are).
Description
When an inferno in Manhattan claims fifty lives, Georgia Skeehan, a rookie marshal with the New York City Fire Department, 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." As she races to unravel the clues before more lives are lost, she is troubled by the erratic behavior of her partner and by the betrayal of another marshal—a man she trusted with her heart and her life.
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.