Firestorm

Rating:
Summary: Good but annoying
Review: If you like books with a paranormal/suspense/mystery edge to it you would like this book.

This is the first book I've read by Johansen and I too picked it up because the paranormal component intrigued me.

There is an ongoing conflict between the main characters that I too found annoying...it goes on way too long...and drags the book down in my opinion.

Worth reading, interesting but be prepared to skip some pages unless you like reading arguments.



Rating:
Summary: I Loved It !!!!!
Review: It is a way she has not ever went before. I loved it fun, suspensful, paranormal mix in. I coud not put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Not a must-have in hardcover
Review: Johansen has never been stellar at developing plausible plots, but there is plausible, even in the realm of science fiction, and stoopid. This almost rates three "o"s

Seriously, borrow it from your library. Or buy it used. Or wait until the paperback comes out and buy IT used.

Rating:
Summary: Reader in CD Version Bad
Review: Kate Burton reading of Firestorm, was without feeling and bland. Don't bother getting the Audio version, the book is so much better. Iris Johansen ought to use one of Janet Evanoviches readers, they are great.

Rating:
Summary: "Phenomally Exciting"
Review: Kerry Murphy is 6 years old. Her and her mother are staying in Boston. At the Brownstone that her mother & father own. Kerry's parents are in the middle of divorce. Her father & brother went to Canada. A fire brakes out and Kerry and her mother are trapped. Her mother is able to get Kerry out and tells her to go for help. Kerry sees a figure standing under under a street light. She runs to it "Please Mama said I had to-"He turned and she stared up into his shadowy face only dimly lit by the flickering flames. She screamed. "Shh, be quite. There's nothing you can do." He raised his hand and she saw something glittering,metalic in his hand. A gun? He brought it down on her head. The night exploded. Kerry spent 2 years in a coma. When she came out, her father thought something was wrong with her. He sent her to an institution. That is where she met Michael Travis. He told her what to do and say to get released. Kerry came out of the coma with a special talent. She could see things. Michael wanted to teach her how to use it and control it. But Kerry wanted no part of it.
Now that Kerry's an adult.She has learned to use it to her advantage as a fire arson investigator. She could go to a scene and see how the fire was started. She kept her visions a secret. She had a arson dog for cover.
Brad Silver is visiting his brother. A US Senator. He stands on the porch to watch as his brother & sister-n-law leave for a dinner.Their limo is engulfed in fire. Brad learns about Kerry through Michael Travis. Brad is following Kerry trying to figure the best time to approach her.
Kerry is taking "SAM" her dog to the hospital,to see the sick kids when she starts getting this feeling. While she's reading to the kids, she gets this vision. She goes to hide. She knows her friend(a fireman)is dead. Brad finds her,enters her mind and takes her away from the vision. He takes her to a lake. Brad is a controller. He enters peoples mind and can help them get through rough times. When Kerry comes to, she is not happy with Brad. She does not want him intruding in her mind. Brad explains that he needs her help to find the guy who killed his brother. She wants no part of it. Until the killer unleashes Firestorm on her brothers house.
Now shes ready. Trask is a sick person. He enjoys fires. He thinks of it as his child. He loves the smell of burning flesh. He takes Kerry & Brad on fiery road. But in the end will Firestorm get Kerry or will they get Firestorm & Trask.
If you are a fan of Iris Johansen.You won't be disappointed. Another great book.

Rating:
Summary: Could it Really Happen
Review: Kerry Murphy is an arson inspector with a super dog who is a fraud. Actually Kerry is the one who solves the arson mysteries because she "sees" the events when they are happening. Kerry acquired her psychic skills when she awakened from a coma following a dreadful fire in which her mother was killed and a stranger hit her over the head to keep her from trying to save her Mom.

People are dying all around Kerry as a psychopath seeks revenge on the everyone who has tried to stop him from using his extrordinary weapon. Brad Silver, another psychic with even greater skills than Kerry's seeks her out to help stop this man before he kills more innocent people. Brad convinces Kerry to return to the scene of her mother's death in order to learn who caused the fire that killed her mom.

The suspense is great, and Johansen has written a book as good as her other works. Keep them coming.

Rating:
Summary: Another good read from Johansen
Review: Kerry Murphy is one of Atlanta's best arson investigators, but most people think it's because of her evidence-sniffing dog, Sam, but this isn't the case. After surviving an attack by an arsonist who killed her mother and put her in a coma for two years, Murphy awoke with a new power. She has become a fire psychic, who has the ability to "see" the details of the fire and even get into the minds of the person who set them. Only a few know her secret so she was suprised when she is approached by Brad Silver to help catch a rather nasty arsonist. This arsonist, named Trask, formerly worked on a government-sponsored project called "Firestorm" where a fire can be started by transforming the molecules of a specific target causing them to burst into flames simply using a remote control. When the project was dismantled, Trask started on a killing spree, seeking not only revenge for ending his project, but to keep his former co-workers from sharing his "child." Also, Murphy discovers that Silver is a psychic as well, but his powers are more potent than even Murphy wants to imagine.

I've read a number of Johansen's books and this one is just as good as the rest. It's a good read, not too heavy, and a touch of romance as well. It's definitely a "chick book" but all of her books are.

Rating:
Summary: arson investigator with psychic ability
Review: Kerry Murphy works as a fire investigator with her dog, Sam. No one knows the real reason Kerry is so good at her job, and it isn't Sam's superior evidence-sniffing ability. When Kerry was a little girl, her mother died in a fire. As Kerry was running out of the house to get help, an unknown man hit her in the head with a metallic object. She was in a coma for two years and when she awoke she possessed a psychic talent which is triggered by fire.

Brad Silver is also with psychic abilities. He is able to invade other people's minds and control their thoughts. Brad is after the man who created Firestorm, a method of spontaneous combustion, the same man who killed his brother and sister-in-law. Brad needs Kerry's psychic ability to sense where and when fires will happen to catch this psychopath.

I usually don't like books of paranormal nature, but I was really drawn into this story. While the plot is not realistic, it is suspenseful. The characters have rather unique traits and are very likable. If you like your thrillers of a more gritty and realistic nature then this book is not for you. If you don't mind some unbelievable plot twists, and a bit of romantic suspense, then you will like this installment from Iris Johansen.

Rating:
Summary: Not a must-have in hardcover
Review: Some call it "mind reading," others perceive it as "psychic ability" or extrasensory perception. Iris Johansen doesn't give it a particular label, but, in her new book, FIRESTORM, the main characters have extraordinary sensibilities that allow them to do things ordinary men and women can't even dream of. When Kerry Murphy, was eight years old she emerged from two years in a coma. She had been hit on the head by the arsonist who torched her house and killed her mother. When she woke up, she "had a special psychic talent triggered by fire. If [she came] anywhere near the area of a fire ... [she] received vibes; sometimes [she could] actually see it being done." As an adult she started her career as a firefighter but the pain her visions imposed upon her forced her to quietly use her talent in a different way. She became an arson investigator with an amazingly accurate record.

Kerry Murphy is good at her job. But because she works with a canine "fire-sniffer" named Sam, and she gives him all the credit for her success rate in identifying arsons. Sam is a dopey looking gangly animal and "as an arson dog he's a complete washout." Kerry wants "everyone to believe [that Sam has the best nose] in the southeast. [She] didn't want [anyone] to know the truth; that the only way [she] knew where and how the fires were being set was [because she] saw it being done." Sometimes, she even felt the blistering heat on the skin and the smoke choking her lungs.

One day, Brad Silver barges into her life, and forever things change for them both. He had been comatose as a result of a serious car crash and emerged with a different kind of psychic power. He has the ability to enter the minds of others and not only read them but, if necessary, alter their thoughts for good or ill. He needs Kerry to help him find and stop "a monster that makes the man who killed [her] mother angelic in comparison." He tells Kerry that he can help her remember the face that she glimpsed that horrific night ... that their mutual therapist, Travis, had given him her name and that he knew she could help stop more deaths.

Kerry is not interested. She knows that often after a person wakes from a coma s/he has altered brain chemistry and may even be "rewired" but this information does nothing to soothe her rage or make her feel less like a whacko. After Silver makes his pitch ... "she said through her teeth, "I don't want anything to do with you ... you're a freak and you want to make me one too." In the years she had worked with Travis in an attempt to come to terms what she deeply considered an affliction, "he said [she] wasn't a freak, that the visions were telepathic, and that [she] had to learn to live with them. He said [she] wasn't alone and that there were others [with these extraordinary abilities as a result of childhood comas.] He and his wife were trying to reach out to find and help them ... because [they] went through it themselves."

But Silver realizes he has his work cut out for him if he is ever going to persuade Kerry to help him catch Trask, a truly "mad" scientist who is taking a scorched earth approach to those he perceives as his enemies. The project he had been working on for the government was shut down because the technology was so dangerous that it would be better for the United States not to develop it in order to keep it out of the hands of rogue nations. But, Trask has already sold his "baby" to the North Koreans and is perfecting it by using it to burn his nemeses to death. If their families or innocent people get in the way, tough!

FIRESTORM is a romantic tale of suspense whose plot is simple and linear which makes it very one-dimensional. The characters are never really fleshed out; their dialog is pedestrian and banal; and the story itself is riddled with soft spots ... too many to give much substance to what could have been a really suspenseful book. Iris Johansen is very popular and prolific writer. She has at least twenty-two previous novels in print all over the world ... thus one can only hope in her next endeavor she gives her readers a richer story populated with multi-dimensional characters.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: More of a Whine-Storm
Review: The premise is interesting as are some of the characters, but you won't like it unless you enjoy identifying with a weak, pessimistic, whiny protagonist who spends most of the story agonizing in inner turmoil or arguing defensively with other characters, coming off overall like a rebellious teenager (she's supposed to be a capable adult!). Then there's the writing. I had to hold my nose, some of it was so bad. The hyphenate "cliché-ridden" would have been coined for this book if it hadn't existed already. "Repetitive" is another adjective that comes to mind. The two main characters have the same argument over and OVER again. And I was about to scream the 5th time I read, "She moistened her lips," (which the author often had the main character do right before she spoke.) Little did I know she would be moistening her lips MANY more times before the book ended, leaving me with the overwhelming impression of a defensive, fretting, saliva smearing, whiner who I actually wished would die in the end. No such luck!