by Candice Fox ★★★★☆
If Devil's Kitchen was being sold as a TV show, it would almost certainly be pitched as "The Shield, but with firefighters instead of police". Set in New York City, the novel follows Engine 99, a four-man firefighting crew that has morphed into a collection of thieves who use fires -- many that they set themselves -- as a distraction to lay the groundwork for a future heist. That approach requires tight coordination among the men and an iron-clad commitment to their life of crime. However, cracks are beginning to emerge in the foundation of that commitment.
The leader of Engine 99 is Matt Roderick, a giant of a man who is on his fourth wife and as a result responsible for three alimony payments on a firefighter's salary. He was in the Twin Towers on 9/11 and still carries the emotional scars of that day, which have left him with a short fuse and a penchant for violence. He leads by intimidation and threats that he routinely backs up with physical assaults. His second in command is Englemann "Engo" Fiss, a loose cannon who more than likely has at least one murder to his name and seems eager to add more to that tally. The most junior member of the team is Jake Valentine, who has been on probation for an extended period of time and serves as the crew's whipping boy, but his gambling addiction (and knee-knocking fear of Matt) keeps him committed to the thefts. And then there's Benjamin Haig.
Ben is the source of the cracks in the foundational commitment to continued crime. His girlfriend of two and a half years, Luna, and her four-year-old son, Gabriel, went missing several months prior, and Ben is convinced that Matt and Engo were behind it. The crew tries to suggest to Ben that Luna got cold feet and took off for Mexico, but her passport is still in their shared apartment, and there were no weaknesses in their relationship. At a loss, Ben ends up sending a letter to the police, offering inside knowledge of several heists in exchange for their help finding Luna and Gabriel. That quid prop quo gets the case escalated and ultimately in the hands of a high-ranking FBI agent, who calls in an off-the-books specialist, introduced as Andrea "Andy" Nearland, to infiltrate the crew and bring them to justice while also, ostensibly, helping Ben find his family.
"If the crew find out I've flipped," Ben says to Andy upon their first meeting, "I'll be dead. You get that? They will kill me. It'll happen on the job, or I'll just disappear. I'll end up in a hole up north somewhere. No one will ever find my body." As evidenced by that passage, the stakes are as high for Ben as they can get, and they're equally high for Andy, working undercover and constantly on the edge of being discovered by the very dangerous people on Engine 99. All of the characters in the novel are flawed antiheroes, but in the same way we couldn't help but pull for Vic Mackey on The Shield, you'll likely find yourself rooting for Ben and Andy. A positive outcome seems unlikely -- even if they find Luna and Gabriel, Ben has confessed in writing to several crimes and will certainly be headed to jail -- but maybe he'll find a way out of the predicament.
The book is filled with tension from cover to cover, and it will keep you guessing. While there were some small portions that defied belief -- for example, Andy passing as a seasoned firefighter after only a week of secret training -- the majority of the plot is sound and the characters richly rendered. This was one of the more compelling mysteries I have read so far this year, right up there with First Lie Wins, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a quick read that's more finely crafted than most in the genre.
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