Jerry Stein is under a lot of pressure. The wealthy owner of an aging fleet of military planes retooled to fight forest fires, he feels his fortune slipping from his grasp as the government lobbies to move "fire bombing" duties from the forest department to the military. The political heat only worsens when in-air accidents start to occur with some frequency. In the meantime, fires rage throughout the West, destroying hundreds of acres of national parks and endangering bordering towns. That s why Stein is relieved when recently retired star pilot Clark Maxwell agrees to unretire temporarily in order to help out during what has become a particularly brutal fire season. Maxwell knows Stein s excellent mechanics wouldn t let an aircraft lift off if it wasn t prepared to withstand the intense heat of the fire beneath it or the extreme weight of the chemicals within it. Could something else be behind the planes in-air failures? Maxwell s instincts are right on, and what he uncovers involves some high-profile political operatives. Nance has carved out his own subgenre, the aviation thriller, and here he successfully melds a timely topic, forest fires, with his specialty, pulse-pounding airborne excitement. There s a built-in audience for this one. Mary Frances Wilkens