FLASH POINT

After a 10-year absence, Luke Adams takes leave from his Army post in Germany to visit Ash Porter, the aging lumberman who raised him in the Sierra Mountains. Ash is now confined to a wheelchair after a near-fatal auto accident, one of several disquieting incidents on the mountain in the recent past. He has warned Luke to stay away, a warning repeated by Luke's estranged, coldly beautiful daughter, Linden, when she meets him in San Francisco. The suspicious death of young Tom Harrow, in the mountain town of Madrone, mutes Luke's warm reunion with his adopted father but doesn't prevent his falling in love with Tom's widowed mother Nan, whose other son, Will, is strangely absent. Meanwhile, tension on the mountain builds with incidents of arson, then explodes with two more killings. Luke finds himself jailed for one of those killings; but before he's freed, he finally learns what's behind the spate of arson and murder. Original plotting marks this author's stories (The Third Blonde, etc.); Flash Point is no exception. Solid characters, plain-speaking prose and a small education in the ways of mountain people and commercial lumbering are plusses in an absorbing tale.