{"id":3548,"date":"2024-03-28T16:25:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-28T16:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3548"},"modified":"2024-04-12T00:57:41","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T00:57:41","slug":"ashes-never-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3548","title":{"rendered":"Ashes Never Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s better than a gripping story that also teaches you a ton about a fascinating subject? That\u2019s just what readers will get in Goldberg\u2019s follow-up to <em>Malibu Burning<\/em> (2023). This time, odd-couple Los Angeles arson investigators Walter Sharpe and Andrew Walker are faced with several perplexing crimes. The central case involves a series of just-built, as-yet-uninhabited homes for the wealthy that combust in a far more explosive way than an empty house. Then there\u2019s the man who\u2019s found dead in a fire, but the fire didn\u2019t kill him. Fraud pokes its head up too, with all keeping Sharpe\u2014a genius with fire investigation, but socially not so much\u2014and his still-learning partner busy with intriguing theories based on detailed descriptions of the workings of fire, accelerants, and more. The characterization here is wonderfully enjoyable, with the partners and their various associates bantering in ways that\u2019s sometimes hilarious and always reveals the human behind the shield. Goldberg\u2019s author\u2019s note helpfully details the books about fire dynamics and investigation that he used for research, and readers may want to try these as well, notably Fireraisers, Freaks, and Fiends, \u201cTorchered\u201d Minds by former LA County arson and explosives detective Ed Nordskog, who also answered questions for the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s better than a gripping story that also teaches you a ton about a fascinating subject? That\u2019s just what readers will get in Goldberg\u2019s follow-up to Malibu Burning (2023). This&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[163,55,65,51],"class_list":["post-3548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-book-of-the-week","tag-mystery-detective","tag-police-procedural","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Ashes-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Ashes.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}