Chasing Fire

Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts, 472 pages

I decided to read this book not because I'm a fan of Nora Roberts or romantic suspense (generally speaking, I'm neither), but because it takes place a stone's throw away from my hometown in Montana and deals with smokejumpers, the crazy forest firefighters who jump out of airplanes into the belly of the beast itself. I was curious how Roberts would handle these people who are such a huge part of a Montana summer.

So how'd she do? Meh. The story revolves around Ro and Gull, two smokejumpers who fall in love, despite Ro's rule to never date a fellow jumper. As they're falling in love, a woman with a vendetta against Ro returns to the smokejumper base, goes bananas and soon turns up dead, roasting to a crisp in a forest fire.

Problems I had with this novel: neither one of the protagonists got too much in the way of character development, which would have been nice, since issues in their past were ripe for more than just a passing mention. Also, I had the murderer figured out almost immediately; kinda lost the "suspense" element there. And finally, there were a few descriptive passages that Roberts obviously meant to be beautiful but were scientifically impossible. A low mist hanging over the bright purple lupines in a green meadow RIGHT NEXT TO a forest fire? Yeah, Montana doesn't have that much moisture at any point in the summer, much less next to a forest fire. Sounds pretty, yes, but I just couldn't suspend my disbelief long enough to enjoy it.