Into the Flames, James Delargy

I probably should have stopped reading this book when the author started on about tyres bursting, pumpers and spigots, and the most unlikely command and control environment for a major bushfire I've ever heard of. I definitely should have thrown it in when he started on about donning bunker gear and the use of PASS devices (the first being structural firefighting gear in Australia, the later being non-existent here). Went so far as to check with a friend who has a mate in the higher-ups of the RFS in NSW, where she used to be a firefighter as well - and well it's all utter and complete rubbish. Nobody's going to be sprinting around in the bush in breathing apparatus and structural PPE in the middle of a raging bushfire. Nobody's going to be wandering around on a fireground, "borrowing" equipment willy nilly, and arguing the point with fire commanders about everything, and nobody is sitting in a command in a command centre tracking individual firefighters. Let's not get into where the hell the water supply for a pumper to protect a crime scene that was unburnt for ages for something that seemed to be in imminent danger, multiple times, was coming from...

Anyway, pressed on, fiction after all, and it's a story of a city cop with PTSD who has been transferred to the bush after what seemed like a not very good reason, but then they all have PTSD these days don't they, and who am I to say what makes higher ups send city cops to the bush every time they screw up. I mean who needs non-screwed-up cops in the bush where they are working pretty well solo, and never know quite what's going to get chucked at them. Including the slowest moving, dramatic, going to kill everything in its path bushfire emergency that seems oddly determined to cut a murder investigation a lot of slack.

I shouldn't have pressed on. I really really REALLY tried with this one, but it's one of those books that I ended up reading until the end to really get a snit on. And in that it worked a treat - high dudgeon by the end of it. Enough to get a mate to check with her mate about what I knew was absolutely wrong about the bushfire fighting scenarios, then checked with my CFA Captain husband about some of the procedural elements, and we both rolled our eyes, swore a bit under our collective breaths and hoped like hell nobody believes that this is even vaguely indicative of a real bushfire emergency. Or a murder investigation for that matter which seemed to made up of red herrings that were stinking high without the heat, and leaps of assumption that could win High Jump Medals.