FLASH POINT

A new series heroine marks a welcome development for a veteran author whose recent work has ranged from exemplary (Double or Nothing, 2001) on down (Star Struck, p. 841). Korean-American Susan Kim Delancy has been divorced for five years from the father of her teenaged son Max, whose custody they share. Susan’s left her San Francisco university job teaching arson investigation to become the California governor’s first appointed arson czar, officially Special Assistant for Arson Investigation. Now that she’s solved several cases, she’s confronted with the most challenging to date. A series of unwed mothers have been burned to death in their homes, and their newborn infants have vanished. Politicos from the governor on down, along with the city’s best-known newspaper columnists, are clamoring for an end to the killings and the arrest of the perp. Susan, working with her tiny staff—her assistant Ricky and a part-time secretary—struggles to follow up every official lead. In the end, though, it’s her desperate effort to rescue Max from the murderer’s clutches that uncovers a tragic past and an unexpected solution.

Jacobs’s uncluttered, straight-ahead narrative style moves the story along at a fast-moving pace never lets up on the tension. An auspicious debut.