Fire Lover
by Joseph Wambaugh
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joseph WambaughEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-05-27
ISBN: 0060095288
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Avon
Book Reviews of Fire Lover
Book Review: Is that a torch in your pocket or are you just a serial arsonist?
Summary: 4 Stars
I first encountered the story of John Orr in an American Justice episode. Something about an arson investigator who sets fires along the way to an arson conference, like a child leaving a trail of blueberries in hopes a rabbit will follow, was unforgettably improbable. The full story of the Glendale fire captain and his little habit is told by true crime great Joseph Wambaugh in his patented police-procedural-style.
Even if he hadn't been a arsonist, John Orr would have been a notable jerk. Apparently Orr yearned to join the LAPD but didn't make the cut and subsequently nursed a resentment toward police and life in general. (Wambaugh declares that the LAPD was Harvard of policing in the 1970s. He may be prejudiced just a tad being a former LAPDer himself. Of course, being an East Coast native my immediate reaction was "No way someone would rather work on the LAPD than the NYPD!" And that was based on no first hand knowledge so, who knows, maybe Wambaugh is right.) Orr instead gets a job as a fireman, ultimately becoming an arson investigator in Glendale all the while complaining about the arrogance of the police. He also, bizarrely, becomes obsessed with catching shoplifters in his spare time, an activity which instead of earning the respect of the police actually annoys them. Once Orr catches the proverbial punks red-handed, the police have to come and arrest the perp and confiscate their ill-gotten gains of, oh, $25 or so.
How, when and why Orr turns to arson is unclear but turn he does moving from brush-fires to his favorites, starting fires in home improvement stores, one of which results in four deaths. Not content with committing the arsons and in some cases showing up later to film the resulting fire, Orr writes a novel detailing his crimes. A bad novel. A bad novel in which the arsonist is turned on by "his fire." The few passages quoted were enough to convince me that John Orr needs to do hard time just for his writing.
Wambaugh isn't one to dig too deeply into the motivations of criminals beyond what's needed to understand them enough to catch them. I can easily imagine Wambaugh muttering "scumbag" when he wrote about Orr. Not that I disagree. Orr was a scumbag, but his crimes were more interesting than he was.
This is not an easy story to tell because, let's face it, an arsonist works alone. Nor is it the sort of story that is action-packed, most of the police work involves looking at fingerprints and maps. So it's impressive that Wambaugh manages to tell a story that is not only interesting but worthy of the Edgar Award it was given. (I've read two of the other Fact Crime books nominated that year and this book is the best of the three.) Wambaugh does a good job of giving the reader a sense of who the investigators are and what the case means to them without falling into the usual traps of adding in pointless details about their personal lives or fashion choices. This book isn't for all True Crime fans but it's a sure-bet for Wambaugh and police-procedural fans.
Summary of Fire Lover
On an October evening in South Pasadena, a horrifying wave of flame swept through a large home improvement center, snuffing out the lives of four innocent people, including a two-year-old boy. Firefighters rushed to the scene, even as a pair of equally suspicious fires broke out in two nearby stores. Silently watching the raging inferno in the midst of the heat, smoke, and chaos was a man respected as one of California's foremost arson investigators, a captain in the Glendale Fire Department ...
From Joseph Wambaugh, the critically acclaimed, nationally bestselling author of The Onion Field, comes the astonishing true story of a nightmarish obsession -- and the hunt for a brilliant psychopath who lived a double life filled with professional tributes and terrifying secrets.
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