Bramble & Nolan

It seems like an accident: A 1930 Duesenberg Arlington Sedan, worth more than $2 million, goes up in flames with media tycoon Stanfield Standish inside. Is Standish the innocent victim of a fire caused by a mechanical defect? And is the Courtland Motor Company, the firm that restored the antique car, at fault? Standish's relatives think they know the answer. They've filed for $52 million in damages. But they don't figure on attorney Max Bramble, a young man with old-fashioned values. He actually believes in the truth and will go to almost any extreme to discover it. As lawyer for the car company, he's not at all sure that Stanfield Standish's death was an accident. Standish created an international cable television network and had great power, but not many friends. Any one of a number of colleagues -- or even family -- could have killed him. For some insights into both fire and human nature, Max seeks out retired New York City fire marshal Wylie Nolan. A crackerjack arson investigator and licensed private detective, Wylie is also wise and full of surprises. As Wylie soon teaches Max, "There is no such thing as a 'natural' fire. Death at the end of long life is supposed to happen. Fire is never supposed to occur..." Did Stanfield Standish die, as his family suggests, as a result of flame impingement? Or was he murdered and then set on fire in his beautifully restored Duesenberg to obliterate evidence of the homicide? The answer lies in burn patterns. The answer lies in the fire's origin and cause. With Wylie and Max -- two of the most appealing new teams to come along in years -- we learn to dig through char, to observe the path and pattern of a fire, and to treat all fire fatalities as possible homicides. Dramatic, poignant, and filled with intriguing forensic details, Origin and Cause confirms the storytelling power of a superbly gifted crime writer.

Someone has set a fire at the Zigfield Art Museum in upper Manhattan. It's a "locked room" kind of fire that couldn't possibly have occurred. Or could it? Because of key control and alarms, nobody could have gotten into or out of the gallery to start the fire. But the controversial exhibition of Sarkin Zahedi's gloomy, expressionist assemblages did indeed burn, and Wylie Nolan, assisted by attorney Max Bramble, has to reconstruct one of the most puzzling fires of his career. There are plenty of suspects who hate Zahedi's work: Wegman Zigfield, the museum's founder, who has a special contempt for Zahedi's kind of art; Jiri Hozda, the Zigfield's associate director, who objects to the government funding for the show; and young, unworldly Camden Kimcannon, a museum assistant who dislikes most art created after the Pre-Raphaelites of Victorian England. Meanwhile, at Wylie's office building, someone is setting fires in the ladies' room down the hall, trying to implicate Wylie's good friend, attorney Miranda Yee. Who hates Miranda enough to set a fire in Wylie's own territory? Wylie and Max investigate both fires and then a final, more devastating fire that takes one life and threatens to destroy another. Three fires: Where did they start and who caused them? When Wylie Nolan investigates a fire scene, he does so meticulously. He calls the facts as he sees them; and he notices details that nobody else sees in spent matches, burn patterns, and ashes.