The Room of White Fire
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4.0 • 7 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“Mesmerizing and haunting.”—Lisa Gardner
“T. Jefferson Parker is the poet of American crime fiction, and The Room of White Fire absolutely proves why.”—C.J. Box
In this stirring thriller from New York Times bestseller and award winner T. Jefferson Parker, P.I. Roland Ford must hunt down a soldier who is damaged by war, dangerous, and on the run.
Roland Ford—once a cop, then a marine, now a private investigator—is good at finding people. But when he’s asked to locate an Air Force veteran who’s escaped from a mental institution, he realizes he’s been drawn into something deep and dark. What he doesn’t know is why a shroud of secrecy hangs over the disappearance of Clay Hickman—and why he’s getting a different story from everyone involved. In a flash, what began as just a job becomes a life-or-death obsession for Ford, pitting him against immensely powerful and treacherous people and forcing him to contend with chilling questions about truth, justice, and the American way.
“A fast-paced, beautifully written thriller."—The Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Parker (The Famous and the Dead and five other Charlie Hood novels) provides a glimpse into the shadowy, disturbing, and morally indefensible world of outsourced interrogation in this excellent series launch. PI Roland Ford, a former cop, has what seems like a simple case: find Clay Hickman, a patient who escaped from Arcadia, a private mental hospital in San Diego County. Like Ford, Hickman is a veteran, but his wartime experiences working in secret prisons and torture have scarred him deeply. Hickman may or may not be insane, but he has a real mission: to "bring white fire to Deimos." What this means becomes horrifyingly clear as the narrative unfolds. Ford picks up Hickman's tracks quickly and pursues him from San Diego to Ukiah, in Northern California's wine country. He also runs up against doctor Briggs Spencer, Arcadia's founder, who coauthored a "torture book" for the CIA. Like many Parker heroes, Ford is a decent human being with more than a hint of sadness about him. Author tour.
Customer Reviews
Above average escapist fare
Author
American. Born in Orange County and has lived in southern California all his life. Following an English degree from UC Irvine, he worked as a reporter on the police beat, then started writing novels of the crime/mystery/thriller variety. His first, Laguna Heat (1985), was made into a movie two years later. He’s written 25 more since then. The Room of White Fire is the first in a series (of three so far) involving former marine and cop, turned PI Roland Ford.
Premise
Entrepreneurial psychologists working as contractors for the CIA develop enhanced interrogation techniques that damage the mental states of the young servicemen as well as the detainees undergoing interrogation.
Plot
Roland Ford, who specialises in missing persons, is tasked with finding Clay Hickman, an escapee from an exclusive, isolated, private mental institution in the San Diego hinterland. The guy’s supposed to be an ex-air force mechanic, although 2 years of his service record are fabricated. He comes from a wealthy family, from whom he is estranged, or is he? The facility, and a string of similar facilities, are run by one of the aforementioned entrepreneurial psychologists who did extremely well from the dalliance with Uncle Sam (think Halliburton for shrinks). He has a tell-all (not really) book coming out too. Needless to say, our hero has psychological baggage of his own. Add pretty psychiatrist, ostensibly rag-tag bunch of offsiders with special skills, teenage love interest for the escapee, goons of various persuasions, and away we go.
Narrative
Slick prose with enough self reflection but not too much, thriller tropes aplenty, gradually building to a suitably action-packed denouement, where comeuppance is dished out. There follows a short warm down preparing the ground for Roland Ford Part 2. This isn’t Mr Parker’s first rodeo in the genre, and it shows.
Characters
Our hero and his target are painted in reasonable detail, or as much detail as one ever gets in books like this. The extras are the usual array of caricatures.
Bottom line
Mr Parker treads a familiar path here, but makes a good job of it. Entertainment value high; moral message somewhat hackneyed.