Into the Flames by James Delargy

Bushfires have been a way of life in Australia for a long time and have become a bit of a staple of into crime fiction. Bushfires cap off Jane Harper’s debut The Dry and Adrian Hyland’s Canticle Creek. Australian authors Michael Brissenden (Smoke) and LA Larkin (The Safe Place) set their fiery novels in America. So it is up to English (but former Australian) ayuthor James Delargy to write a crime novel set during a massive Australian bushfire in Into the Flames.

The action of Into the Flames takes place in and around the fictional Blue Mountains town of Rislake which is under threat from a major bushfire. Half of Rislake has been evacuated and the other half is preparing to do the same. Into this hellish milieu comes new local cop Alex Kennard. Kennard has been transferred to the Blue Mountains under a cloud and is not really trusted by his colleagues. But when Kennard discovers the body of local woman Tracey Hilmeyer his investigative instincts come into play and he sees a way to get himself back in the game. The problem for Kennard is the very real and present danger that the fire presents not just to the investigation but to the investigators themselves.

Delargy uses the fire to both hamper and put a ticking clock on the investigation. Kennard has trouble interviewing witnesses who are also fire fighters as he is seen as interfering with efforts to save the town. Even Kennard’s desire to see justice done is seen as secondary to the need to combat the fire. And, honestly, many readers might agree. Given some of his suspects are on the front line of a major bushfire it is unclear why Kennard has to go to that front line to find/interview them rather than waiting for the fire to be under control. But it does add a lot of tension to the plotting and places Kennard in some seriously dangerous situations.

Alex Kennard joins a long line of damaged but solid police detectives. His backstory emerges slowly and gives some additional motivation for him to prove himself to his colleagues. Delargy manages to capture the impact of Kennard’s PTSD well – readers may not like it or agree when Kennard flies off the handle but Delargy makes sure they understand the underlying trauma that drives his responses.

But that said, the best crime fiction is never about the crime or its resolution. It is about the world that the author builds and reveals through the investigation. And in this respect Into the Flames delivers. Delargy gives a genuine feeling of being in a small rural town under threat from a major bushfire, the impacts on ordinary people, of the types of people who go to the front lines of these disasters and of the challenges that they face. And he does this by upping the level of difficulty, putting a murder investigation in the middle of the action.

Overall Into the Flames is an atmospheric and engaging if sometimes deliberately stressful read. Every character – cops, suspects, townspeople – is under threat throughout the story. Layering a murder investigation on top of that, even a meandering one like this one, adds neatly to the level of tension.