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December 05, 2008
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 | The Burning by Jackie Tritt | Reviewed by Midge Baker |  | Publisher: Virtual Tales
http://www.virtualtales.com
ISBN: 0978215729
Genre: Fiction
Subgenre: Mystery/Crime
Release date: Dec 2006
Format: e-book
Pages: 188
Price: $4.95
| It's summer in the Australian bush country - hot - drier than previous years. The strong winds worry Alan Foster, Senior Constable of Pelican East. His fears are justified. Bush fires sweep down on his small back-of-beyond community. He and his new young assistant, Constable Jade Lee, prepare against a possible worst case scenario. They empty out the schools and the nursing home, sending the evacuees to wait out in the fire refuge. Volunteer firefighters rush off to try to defend the town. Citizens begin to complain. Mrs. Montague is missing two of her most valuable horses. Ricky Martello is worried that his mother is home alone. One teacher, Judy Halliday, can't get in touch with her husband, Peter. To top it all off, Foster's own dependable wife, Dot, tells him that their youngest child, Melanie, has disappeared from school. For once, Alan hopes that their rebellious 16-year old really has run off with that punk from Dandenong she's been seeing.
Dot takes over organizing the volunteer staff providing services at the fire refuge. Young Constable Lee is city-bred and has never seen a brushfire before. Foster leaves her to man the phones, order road blocks put up by officers arriving from other towns, and take care of the office. He drives to the outlying homes. No one is home at Martello's house, so perhaps his mother is safe. Foster remembers seeing a column of smoke from the Halliday place at a time before the main fire hit the town. In the ruins of the Halliday's shed, Foster finds a badly charred body. Is it Peter? He can't tell. Surely Peter, a firefighter, should have been able able to escape his burning shed, unless... This body has skull injuries. A tuft of black hair is clenched inside the victim's fist. And the intensity of the charring suggests the use of an accelerant. Could someone be using the brushfire to cover up murder and arson? Can Foster prove who did it? Will he be able to keep his priorities straight in the light of Melanie's disappearance?
This is the American publication of Jackie Tritt's novel The Burning first published in Autralia in 1998. Ms. Tritt has retired from teaching science and from career counseling. She is now pursuing a new and successful career, that of award-winning author. Her articles and short stories have appeared in major Australian newspapers and in children's magazines there, in the USA, and in Canada. In 2005, she gained more prestige and won $5000 in the illustrious Herald Sun/Collins competition. She is awaiting publication of her second novel, Raven's Cry, and is working on her third. | | |
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