ISBN 0312-25206-4

Christine Andreae scorches the pages in SMOKE EATERS , a wilderness mystery set on a mountain in Montana where a forest fire is raging out of control. The Justice Peak fire is "one of the big ones," an environmental war zone where 1,709 troops are battling an elemental force that makes up its own military rules. As the first female commander of this macho army -- whose sooty soldiers are grouped into squads of smoke jumpers, hotshots, ground-pounders, sawyers, swampers and mop-up gruntts -- Mattie McCulloch has some personal blazes to put out before she can get to work. But she’s all-pro when five firefighters, including her own son, vanish in a firestorm set by an arsonist. The action leaps from one flash Point to the next while the firebug lurks in the smoke, getting his sexual jollies from the destruction and adding a Stygian dimension to a hot and hellish story.

---New York Times Book Review, March 19, 2000

Along with the edict against divulging the endings of mysteries, reviewers are pledged never to reveal the true identity of mangled corpses, the hidden motivation of killers, and the final body count when all the shooting and stabbing has stopped. Too bad, because SMOKE EATERS (Minotaur, $24.95) by Christine Andreae is a clever mystery that offers the thrill of the unexpected-although not in the definitive form served up in Blood Rain. Fortunately, there's still lots to talk about here because SMOKE EATERS is also filled with agreeably complicated characters and an "extreme adventure" storyline-a gargantuan forest fire that threatens all the flora, fauna and foolhardy humans (among them a band of nudist militia-persons) in its path.

The heroine of SMOKE EATERS is Mattie McCulloch, a forty-ish redhead who comes from a long line of firefighters. When the novel opens, Mattie has just been appointed Incident Commander of the Justice Peak forest fire that's raging in Southwest Montana. The first woman ever to hold such a job, Mattie is in charge of all of the firefighters at the site, most of whom are male and many of whom resent taking orders from a female. Count among the latter Mattie's own 19-year-old son, Jimmy, who's carrying on the family tradition and working with a "hotshot" crew.

The "hotshots," we're told, are known for their skills as endurance runners. But when Jimmy and some of his crew are caught in a blow-up, they can't out run the fire's fatal touch. One of Mattie's first official duties as Incident Commander is to announce the death of her son and his comrades. After professional investigators judge the blow-up to be suspicious (even, perhaps, the work of an arsonist, Mattie's unofficial duty becomes to find her son's killer.

We readers know from the beginning that foul play is afoot because we're privy, as Mattie is not, to the computer diary entries of the evildoer. Inexorably, the paths of Mattie and her nemesis converge, and the results are incendiary. Any mystery involving forest fires that begins with an epigraph from Norman Maclean's Posthumously published book, Young Men and Fire, about the deadly Mann Gulch of 1949, had better be good. Maclean's book ranks right up there, in my still awed opinion, with such other exquisite prose elegies as Philip Roth's Patrimony and even Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. Of course, Fire Eaters is a different order of literature altogether, intent foremost on delivering suspense. But the mystery earns the right to invoke Maclean's masterpiece. In its depiction of a grief-dazed Mattie, struggling to do her job even as she's slowly taking in the horror of Jim's death. SMOKE EATERS provides not only a riverting murder mystery but also an affecting meditation on loss, missed opportunities and the fantasy of a second chance.

  Maureen Corrigan, Mysteriers,
Washington Post, March 26, 2000

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Women hit the fire lines in the Montana-based Smoke Eaters

For several weeks now, Missoula has been going in and out of a fog of smoke. At times it has appeared as if we are in a bubble, detached from the surrounding mountains, highways, and rivers. But the feeling brought on by the overhead coverage isn't the cozy feeling of fog rolling off die ocean, when you always know that as the day progresses, or the front moves on, sunny skies will return. Here in Montana with rites burning in every direction, there's no weather cycle to inform us as to when the haze of ashy air will clear out for good. Red eyes and difficulty breathing throughout the valley, are symptoms with no end in sight. As the AP declares the Bitterroot Valley "ground zero" for the worst fire season in 50 years, Missourians find themselves in awe: of the fires, and the women and men who fight to keep them at bay. Between official evacuations and natural fear, very few people actually get to see a fire line and what goes on behind the smoke in order to ensure the safety of homeowners and their property. While fiction is known for its romanticizing tendencies, Christine Andreae's latest book, Smoke Eaters, gives an exciting, perhaps informative, look at what happens when the media goes away and firefighters go to work.

Mattie McCuloch was born to fight fires. Growing up on stories of fire heroics from both her mother and father who were firefighters in southwestern Montana, Mattie barged into the male-dominated culture and stayed long enough to see herself rise through the ranks of high command. Now with her own legacy of firefighting (her son Jimmy is in his second year as a hotshot), Mattic is named incident Commander of the summer's largest fire. Justice Peak has gone up in flames and it's not dying down anytime soon, threatening private property owners throughout the valley, including a militant nudist colony. Brought onto the job after several explosive racial incidents threatened to divide the fire camp, Mattie must balance fire strategy with human relations strategy, as there is no shortage of peers or underlings wishing to see the first female Incident Commander become the last one.

Woven into the already tense narrative are the journal entries of a sadistic misogynist who has a thing for fire games and appears to have quite a bit of influence among the high command. His writings revolve around one of Jimmy's company, Cat Carew, a wild woman and fierce firefighter. She apparently has spurned the mystery man's advances, and now he wants her, and anyone she's associated with, to pay. What results is arson, murder and a grand dethroning in the works for Mattie.

In a story fiddled with innate suspense, Andreae deftly weaves in Matties emotional struggles to come to terms with her son's disregard for her, her own poor decisions in her personal life, and the fine line a woman in a male-dominated world must walk. There is much at stake in this book, and it doesn't all have to do with the thousands of acres of public and private property being lost to the fire. Andreae does, however, have quite the eye for fire; her descriptions of the sight and south of the deadly monster bring you to the front lines, soot on your face and blisters on you hands. Clearly Andreae has done her research both on fires and on southwestern Montana, were she spends her summers. She has crafted what could have been in other hands, simply another suspense thriller, into a nuance story of what sacrifice really means when the one passion in you life is the one thing society won't permit you to have.

Margariet McKenna
Missoula Independent
August 17-August 24, 2000

Other Reviews for Smoke Eaters

With painstakingly accurate details, the author captures the danger, the sacrifice, the smells and the heat ... to make SMOKE EATERS a first-rate cliffhanger. The buildup interwoven through the story that profiles the villain is wonderfully horrific ... SMOKE EATERS is first-rate, an unpredictable page turner."

  Denver Post, March 12, 2000

-Ann Lloyd Merrriman, Editor, Commentary/Books
 Richmond Times Dispatch, March 19, 2000

-Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2000

 ---Booklist, January 1, 2000

 --- Library Journal

 ---Publishers Weekly,
December 13, 1999

Privacy Policy---In contacting the author, your personal information will not be released or sold to any third parties.

Smoke Eaters
is available through these fine resellers
(Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95)

 Back to Top