Ridley Pearson: Crime Novels for Adults

"For complex, intelligent plots, intense emotions and powerful thrills, no one does it better..."
—Jill Smith, Romantic Times

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Fire is a vicious and greedy killer. It consumes not only its victims, but nearly all evidence of its creator-carried aloft in a column of smoke and ash. Beyond recognition. There is a homicidal arsonist loose in Seattle. Single mothers are being killed in fires that burn hotter than experts have ever seen. The children are spared. Why?

(paperback)

For Seattle Police Sergeant Lou Boldt and the department’s psychologist, Daphne Matthews, the High Temperature Accelerant fires challenge their every resource. The fuel used in these deadly fires is as much a mystery as the identity of the arsonist who sets them.

A Seattle fire marshal reveals to Lou Boldt the ominous quotations sent to him before each of the fires. A twelve-year-old boy, caught in an ugly battle at home, unintentionally witnesses a drug deal that may not involve drugs at all, but ingredients far more volatile and lethal. Did the boy, in fact, see the arsonist’s face? Can police rely on a twelve-year-old boy as a witness? Or is the fire marshal, his past suddenly in question, more involved than he wants to believe?

Based on two years of research that included interviews with fire fighters, tours of secret government labs, and the help of an Apollo astronaut, Beyond Recognition combines Ridley Pearson’s signature use of high-tech forensics with breathless pacing and complex characters to bring to the page his most compelling, challenging, and satisfying novel to date.

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"Pearson's dazzling forensics will hook his usual fans. But it's the richness of incident and the control of pace that'll keep them dangling as he switches gears each time you think the story's got to be winding down in this exhilarating entertainment."
   —Kirkus Reviews

"The best suspense writers never stop playing the reader's emotions, alternating the rhythm of hot and cold, taut and slack, to create a syncopated form of torture as painful as it is exquisite.... You have to be a bit of a masochist to give in to a Pearson plot, but when you do, it hurts so good."
   —Bill Ott, Booklist

"Beyond Recognition graphically demonstrates why author Ridley Pearson can be considered one of the finest suspense writers of this generation. For complex, intelligent plots, intense emotions and powerful thrills, no one does it better."
   —Jill M. Smith, Romantic Times Magazine

"Pearson writes such a believable detective. He is not just a "stud" or just a "hard-nose" or one dimensional in any way. He is the total package."
   —ReviewsAndMore.com