CLINTON McKINZIE – Trial by Ice and Fire. Delacorte, hardcover, July 2003. Dell, paperback, March 2004.

   This is the third recorded appearance of Antonio Burns, who’s a special agent for Wyoming’s Division of Criminal Investigation, and while I may be wrong, I think I have the first two of them sorted out.

   First came The Edge of Justice (Delacorte, hc, 2002), followed by Point of Law (Dell, pb, April 2003). What’s confusing is that there was no hardcover edition of the second book, as far as I’ve been able to discern, and that the second book is described as the prequel to the first book.

   In any case, if you’re a fan of mysteries that take place in the wide open country and clear blue skies of the Rocky Mountain states, my hunch is that these are all books meant especially for you.

   Some backstory first. At a previous point in his past, Burns survived a shootout set-up by three bad guys, all of whom perished, gaining his nickname of QuickDraw as a consequence, not to mention plenty of unwanted notoriety. This incident has not endeared him with many of the higher echelons of the DCI.

   His drug-addicted brother Roberto is currently on the run, an escapee from a Colorado prison, trying to decide if he should make a deal with the authorities and give himself up. And Antonio’s girl friend from Denver is suddenly not talking to him, all the while he’s trying to protect a prosecutor with the Teton County Attorney’s office (young, pretty, female) from a stalker who may prove to be deadly.

   Antonio Burns’ own addiction seems to be mountain climbing, and while he seems to have superhuman powers of recovery and recuperation from days filled with snow-packed action and danger, I will settle for the armchair variety, thank you very very much.

   McKinzie tells the story in First Person, Present Tense, which to me sounds stilted and awkward, but (on the other hand) while I haven’t taken the time to analyze it fully, the narrative, jam-packed with the (aforementioned) action and danger, is intense enough to keep one up well past one’s bedtime several times over, and the format of the telling must have had something to do with it.

   There are several WOW’s that came up in the telling – a surprise or two or three that come along the way. Here’s a quote that I liked, not necessarily linked to any of the surprises, but I liked it anyway. From page 317:

   â€œMy god.” The words slip out of my mouth in a tone of awe and reverence.

   The flames are gigantic. They claw and writhe hundreds of feet into the night sky. They fill the entire western horizon. And even though the fire is still a couple of miles away, across the summit and beyond a small valley, I can feel its hot, stinking breath on my face. It sucks then blows at me, respirating deeply like a bellows in its need for fuel. Suddenly this idea of Wokowski’s that we’ll ride it out in a paper-thin aluminum shelter is more than ludicrous – it’s suicidal. We are going to die.

   In terms of a detective story, if anyone is truly reading this one with that in mind, here’s where you might be judgmental and where any weakness might lie. Burns is only semi-dependable as to a judge of character. Perhaps there’s too much going on in his life at the time, and perhaps there are simply too few suspects, which is more than I should tell you right now, if you were to call me on it. But for a keener sense of place against a backdrop of inner turmoil and personal self-doubt, I do not believe you can find much better than this.

— May 2004

      The Antonio Burns series —

1. The Edge of Justice (2002)
2. Point of Law (2003)
3. Trial by Ice and Fire (2003)
4. Crossing the Line (2004)
5. Badwater (2005)