JACK FOXX – Wildfire.   Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1978. Reworked and republished as Firewind, as by Bill Pronzini: M. Evans, hardcover, 1989; paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1990.

   A drought-stricken and dried up corner of northern California, an ultra-conservative logging baron with an illegal stockpile of guns and ammunition, and a marriage in trouble — all waiting for the right spark to set them off.

   There’s only one way out, and that’s by taking the most hair-raising train ride you’ve ever been on, traveling by antique steam locomotive through a countryside going up in flames.

   Even second-hand, this is without a doubt one trip you won’t want to be left behind on.

[UPDATE] 07-13-09.   The second version of this book puzzled me when I learned about it before posting this old review. I hadn’t known anything about it until I started looking up the publishing information about Wildfire, which as you see, I reviewed some 30 years ago. So I asked the author himself, Bill Pronzini. Read his reply, here in this later post.