Freedom, fire and ire

A rift is a cleft, a rending, a fissure. It also can describe schism, division, dissension, a break in friendly relations between individuals, groups or nations. It is the latter definition to which Raelynn Hillhouse’s “Rift Zone” refers: fissures that cleave Soviets and their restive East German vassals in spring 1989, and also their ruling clans, Stalinists and Gorbachevites, stick-in-the-muds and reformists. We know now that the reformists won. Sort of. A year that began with Vaclav Havel in a Czech jail ended with him becoming that nation’s president and Erich Honecker of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) under arrest. The Berlin Wall came down. Poland, Hungary and Romania got rid of their Communist rulers. Gorbachev and George Bush pere proclaimed the Cold War at an end.

Hillhouse’s characters lurch, blunder and wend their way through April of that busy year, passing through only slivers of Central Europe, hitting mostly the flashpoints of Berlin and Moscow. No one can guess where trends will lead, but covert groups within the DDR’s Stasi secret service and Russia’s KGB are conspiring to stem the ominous slide toward a bit more freedom. Faith Whitney, a U.S. academic and smuggler of pretty goods from East to West, is caught in their conspiracies. Will she be sacrificed to the sullen Stasis’ murderous juggleries, or will she help defeat the bloodstained bullies? The skein of her struggle to survive Stasi and KGB wiles involves hide-and-seek, stealth, traps, ambuscades, hurt. And triumph of good over iniquity. The switchback route through all this turns up a rich crop of forgers, spies, smugglers and others of the cloak-and-dagger set and a lot of information about intelligence, airlines, bomb-making and -unmaking -- producing a thriller that is evocative, gripping and convincing.

Earl Emerson’s “Pyro” is jagged and rough-hewn, much like its hero, Lt. Paul Wollf, who commands the ladder truck of Seattle’s Fire Station 6. Wollf is a good guy given to occasional fits of uncontrollable violence but only against bad guys. Bad guys, for him, are mostly bullying, incompetent superiors. But then a pyromaniac who 20 years earlier caused the death of another Lt. Wollf, Paul’s father, gets out of prison and resumes his incendiary games. Since fire bugs have only to strike a match, walk away and savor the conflagration that ensues, the arsonist won’t be caught until he lets himself be cornered. Meanwhile, Wollf and his team skid from one scorcher to another, some deliberate, some accidental, some merely false alarms. Emerson, a lieutenant with Seattle’s fire department, serves up an account of the firefighters’ routine within the station and on call, a mix of danger and drag, professional know-how and routine, incandescent incidents, pranks and skylarking. The author’s vivid, vigorous text bears witness to an exacting, hazardous and indispensable line of work.

Robert Ferrigno’s “The Wake Up” is fast-moving, hard-driving and calls for suspension of disbelief in the highest degree. Frank Thorpe is a veteran of the Army’s Delta Force, a loose cannon who blew up every job he filled and a poor loser who believes in revenge. At loose ends in Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach, Long Beach, Laguna and environs, Thorpe hunts the nameless man who killed his ladylove and cultivates sources of outrage to pursue in his free time. But even modest payback ventures skid into mayhem. And, since he overdoes almost everything, he leaves behind havoc and a litter of casualties.

Critics of Ferrigno’s novels have mentioned noir and Raymond Chandler. But Chandler’s noir was less chaotic and Chandler’s honor-oriented heroes were less confused. Even so, if you don’t think too much (I did not), Ferrigno’s punchy prose will hold you through the night.

“Fallen” by Kathleen George is a puzzling book. Its plot seems convoluted but is actually quite straightforward. A well-loved doctor is shot dead on a Pittsburgh street while returning late from work, and no one can fathom who did it or why. Against the background of a widow’s grief and in the absence of suspects, the unlikely contortions of the search for the killer grip even as they exasperate. It is not the plot that piques, but the spirit of a tale that is part dirge for dysfunctional families and part demeaning description of the major female characters as basically needy, weak, emotionally unreliable and open to exploitation both sexual and sentimental. Though sometimes overwritten, “Fallen” startles, stings and gives fair value. But it works mainly as a vehicle for its female author’s disconcerting misogyny. Bah! Humbug! *