Fire Talks by Jean Raab

I forgot Larry’s last name sometime in the past thirty years, but I never forgot what he taught me about fire.

Larry was the top arson investigator for Kentucky “back in the day” when I ran the Western Kentucky News Bureau for Scripps Howard. We’d cross paths when I covered various fires that were particularly large, suspect, or involved fatalities. Ever curious, I asked lots of questions. Larry was a talkative soul, and was quick to supply the answers.

I found him and fire so interesting that when he was in town—Henderson, KY—I scheduled long lunch dates with him. Often these led to nifty news articles. He invited me to a couple of arson training courses he ran, and in one of the programs I got to play the role of the arsonist.

He taught me that sometimes you can look at a building fire while it rages and tell if it was deliberately set. It’s in how the fire burns, how it travels.

“Fire talks,” he told me. That’s a line I use in my latest Piper Blackwell book, The Dead of Sled Run. Some of Larry’s wisdom spews out the mouth of the arson investigator I put on the scene in Sled. 

He schooled me about burn patterns, accelerants, and oddities like lightbulbs. Sometimes a lightbulb melts, pointing like an arrow to where in the building a fire originated. He also talked about motive.

Larry kept meticulous records on fires in cities throughout Kentucky. In Henderson, where my office perched, he had a list of residences that reported kitchen fires every six or seven years. The pattern, he said, was that those homeowners wanted their kitchens updated and used insurance money from the fires to do that. Of course, Larry managed to put a stop to that kitchen renovation practice, proving arson and sending some folks to jail.

Larry was a genius with fire and motives. And I count myself fortunate for being in his circle those decades past. I wonder sometimes if he’s still kicking. He was in his forties or maybe early fifties then. I should put on my reporter’s hat and go digging, recover his last name and see if he’s still around. Let him know I still appreciate him.

Fire is central to the plot in Sled Run, and beyond my recollections with Larry and the arson training I received, I dug into true crime shows and news reports. 

I watched a documentary on Thomas Sweatt, the most prolific serial arsonist in America. He was arrested almost twenty years ago and confessed to more than three hundred and forty arson fires. Four people were killed. He’s still in prison.

Fire can be great for a writer to play with in a book, descriptive, evocative, gut-wrenching. I covered too many of them in my newspaper days. The ones where kids died were the roughest. I remember three kids burning to death in Kentucky, left home alone while the mother stepped out to go grocery shopping. I witnessed a semi-truck fire I will never get out of my brain, the driver thrashing in the cab while flames engulfed him. The firetrucks could not get down the steep embankment. Eventually the fire was put out. I’d climbed down the embankment to cover it, and I could include the awful details, but I’ll stop with … fire is cruel.

And so are the people who purposely set them.

Gee, that sounds all preachy, and that wasn’t what I intended when I started talking about Larry. I have other “Larrys” in my life who I treasure and assist in making my fiction feel real. Bill Gilsdorf and Mike Black, former lawmen who really know their stuff. Rob Scales, my legal go-to. I have their last names (handy thing, eh, so I can fully address Christmas cards). 

Now I need to go find Larry’s.

The Dead of Sled Run by Jean Rabe (Boone Street Press) Out Now

It is almost Christmas and yards glow with twinkling lights. But more than chestnuts are roasting. A raging fire sweeps through the decorated landscape of Sled Run, destroying the home of Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg and killing two. An accident? Or did something toxic fuel the flames? Sheriff Piper Blackwell and Detective Basil Meredith believe Oren was targeted and are tasked with finding motive and means before more than the holiday burns bright. With many clues reduced to ashes, can Piper and Basil catch the culprits before they strike again? Or is this blaze just the start of the most murder-filled time of the year?

About the Author:

USA Today best-seller, Jean Rabe's impressive writing career spans decades, starting as a newspaper reporter and bureau chief. From there she went on to become the director of RPGA, a co-editor with Martin H. Greenberg for DAW books, and, most notably, Rabe is an award-winning author of more than forty science fiction/fantasy and murder mystery thrillers. She writes mysteries and fantasies, because life is too short to be limited to one genre--and she does it with dogs tangled at her feet, because life is too short not to be covered in fur.

Her personal webpage is at www.jeanrabe.com. You can also find her on X @jeanerabe and on Facebook.

Jean Rabe’s Amazon author page can be found here.

 

Welcome to G's Bar

From The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge:

G’s was an old building that a few decades past had been a flower shop—when Fulda had a business district. Rundown on the outside, because maybe Gretta hadn’t gotten to exterior remodeling yet, it was shiny and new on the inside with a hint of rustic style. The bar was dark polished wood with brass trim, and the stools looked to be leather-covered. There was a jukebox, the old-fashioned kind with real 45s in it, but it wasn’t playing anything; maybe it was just for show. Two pool tables in the front had Coca Cola lights hanging over them, and several round dining tables spread out over a pitted, impressive hardwood floor were filled with customers—who had paused their conversations to regard Millie.

Millie was twenty-four and in her full deputy regalia, including her hat. The rest of the occupants—all men, save a bartender—were in jeans and t-shirts and in their forties to seventies, looking rough around all the edges and relaxed.

I read a random article on the MSN page one morning: “Obscure Laws in Every State.” I figured there might be something interesting I could use in a book. I tabbed over to Indiana and discovered that it is illegal for a bartender to give a buddy a free drink if he is charging everyone else. Handing over a complimentary beer could land you in jail with a hefty fine … if you’re reported, if a cop bothers to show up, and if the DA is willing to prosecute.

I wanted to use that outdated law somehow in one of my mystery novels. I just had to create the vehicle for it. So I built a tavern in rural Spencer County, Indiana, in Sheriff Piper Blackwell’s jurisdiction. I made it rundown on the outside, slick and shiny on the inside—as the owner had paid for a serious remodel, sprinkled in some customers, and created the bartender, a retired school teacher in need of something to do with her free time. I put records in the old-time jukebox and plopped the whole of it on a county road.

Then I set a chapter of The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge in this bar, put that obscure law into play, and it grew into a subplot that wrapped itself into the novel. There’s a murder in the book, else it wouldn’t be a murder mystery, and that crime is elsewhere and serves as the main action of the novel. G’s Bar is just for a little color, to let me have fun with an obscure law, and to show that a rural sheriff’s department never has only one crime to handle.

The action in Jerusalem Ridge switches between rural Spencer County, IN, and across the river in the woods in Kentucky, a spot where cell phones don’t work. I consulted various experts in those Kentucky backwoods, and my law enforcement and DA buddies to make sure I got all the details right. I detest mysteries that don’t follow real-world practices and places. Sure, I’m a writer, I make stuff up. But the laws of geography and courts … I make sure I keep it factual.

I had fun surfing and ogling tavern online menus so I could establish the offerings at G’s Bar. And I conducted a quick poll on the price of “beer night specials” so I knew what to charge at my fictional establishment.

G’s Bar is a place I might like to visit. The music on the jukebox is good, aged and rhythmic, the tunes I like to hear. The pool tables are up at the front, and I enjoy playing pool, even though I am not good at it. I don’t care for beer, but once a year I order a strawberry daiquiri for my birthday … except this year, Covid closings, you know.

The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge by Jean Rabe

Sheriff Piper Blackwell’s three-day vacation with old Army buddies ends in tragedy. At the same time, a vile hate crime along a county road enrages her department. Their forces divided, Piper and her deputies must solve both cases before tensions boil and threaten the rural fabric of Spencer County, Indiana. Only eight months on the job, the young sheriff must weave together clues to uncover both a killer and a secret that could scar her soul.

Jean Rabe has written 40 novels and more than 100 short stories, has made the USA Today Bestseller list a few times, and lives in Central Illinois surrounded by cornfields and railroad tracks. When not writing, she games and spends time with her cadre of dogs. She’s good at tossing tennis balls. A former newspaper reporter and bureau chief, she penned a true crime novel with F. Lee Bailey: When the Husband is the Suspect.

The link to The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge can be found here.

Jean Rabe’s Amazon author page can be found here.

My personal webpage is at www.jeanrabe.com