Ashes of Aries
by Martha C. Lawrence
Category: Fiction

I closed my eyes, intent on quieting my thoughts, the necessary first step in opening up psychically. I relaxed my shoulders and took a deep breath through my nostrils. I smelted smoke. Sharp and pungent, it hit the back of my throat, tickling the mem­brane. I coughed and opened-my eyes. The nervousness I'd been feeling all morning turned to fear.... "Something's burning," I warned. When Matthew Fielding, the four-year-old son of a San Diego telecommunications mogul, turns up missing, the psychic skills of P.I. Elizabeth Chase are requested. The stakes are raised soon after Elizabeth begins her investigation when a wildfire breaks out in Rancho Santa Fe, the secluded community where Matthew and his family—and Elizabeth's own parents—live. Aided and abetted by the Santa Ana winds, flames rage out of control, consuming thousands of acres and dozens of homes. Before the ashes can be cleared away, another fire blazes through everything in its path. Are the kidnapper and arsonist one and the same? Will Elizabeth be able to find the clues she needs in the dying embers around her? It's a race against time as man and nature combine to wreak destruction on Elizabeth's community and keep a little boy lost forever. In the fifth installment of a series Sue Grafton referred to as "a natural...and a supernatural as well," Martha C. Lawrence once again combines the quirky and the familiar as her smart, resilient, and endear­ing heroine uses her psychic ability and incomparable detecting skills to hunt down a killer.