Burning Rage (Deuce Mora)

It's already been a rough year for the Chicago Journal's first-rate journalistic sleuth, Deuce Mora. After two agonizing investigations - one of which won her a Pulitzer Prize, the other of which forced her to kill a man - she claims she's sworn off action-packed chases that cause nightmares. Still...from the moment she hears the earliest details of the first fire, her detective-instincts say the pieces don't fit, and every other instinct tells the hard-hitting reporter she can't walk away from the story - even though she knows she'll regret it.
As a series of deadly fires destroys landmarks first, then occupied structures, the body count rises by scores and the city is gripped by terror at Christmastime, adding lost revenue to property damage in the hundreds of millions. Whole blocks of Chicago real estate are falling to an arsonist, but no one knows why and everyone suspects the worst--terrorism.
After the initial tip from the lead arson investigator (aka her boyfriend), Deuce is on her own to solve the mystery. Their relationship could endanger his reputation and his job if he's even suspected of leaking information to her, so they've called a temporary halt. But she's not exactly lacking for company - her old adversary, FBI agent Colter, has a tail on her, and Colter himself keeps popping out of the shadows. His presence at the crime scene and, even more revealingly, that of an NSA agent point to the suspicion of jihadist terrorism. But no terrorist group has claimed the mayhem.

"Good reporters do not always good novelists make, but Jean Heller is both." -The Boston Sunday Globe

"Heller, herself a journalist and former investigative reporter, crafts a tightly constructed mystery featuring a protagonist of tremendous empathy and a bent toward thoughtful introspection." -Publishers Weekly/Book Life

Jean Heller knows newspapers and she knows Chicago. It's no wonder that her fictional female columnist Deuce Mora rings true. The tenacious reporter sinks her teeth into a grisly half-century old crime with the odds stacked against her and the body-count mounting. Like Jack Nicholson's character in Chinatown, Deuce sticks her nose in other people's business and finds dead-ends and danger at every turn. Part journalism procedural, part character study, THE SOMEDAY FILE is a humdinger of a mystery, the first of a welcome new series. -Paul Levine, author of BUM RAP