Barking Dogs

The network news crew flying out from Los Angeles to cover a forest fire in Idaho believe themselves entitled to danger pay. The blaze has already completely destroyed a rural religious community and all its inhabitants and is still raging, but that's not the reason they feel at risk. The danger is from their onscreen reporter, beautiful, sexy, and malignantly ambitious Vicki Garcia.
When Vicki turns her wiles on a man who has something she wants - whether an extra minute on camera or a helicopter ride to the off-limits scene of the tragedy - she gets it. Sometimes it provides great coverage; it can also get one or more of her victims incarcerated, incapacitated, or incinerated. Particularly at peril is the crew's smitten field producer, Kevin Manwaring, whom Vicki keeps on edge with unspoken - and unkept - promises of delights to come.
The land occupied by the gentle people who perished in the conflagration is coveted by a mining company, and when the TV technicians discover a severely wounded dog with a bullet in its chest, they begin to wonder about the true origin of the fire.
This rare and authentic look at the people of TV news at work on location makes a gripping thriller and provides a humorous but hard look at some driven characters in the manic world of network television.

A writer who is alternately warm and cynical, but always knowing, Irvine departs from his series of Mormon mystery adventures featuring Moroni Traveler ( The Great Reminder , etc.) to introduce a new sleuthing team: maverick television producer Kevin Manwaring and tough reporter Vicki Garcia. The Latter Day Saints still haunt the storyline as the pair investigates an Idaho fire that wiped out the members of a Mormon offshoot group. The eyes of Kevin's bosses dilate with visions of big ratings after the discovery of charred bodies of children, but Kevin senses more. Many people were angry with the sect: the fire chief lost his wife to a cult member, and residents of the nearby town of Defiance resented the group's refusal to let a software company build a plant on its land or to sell badly needed water rights to the town. The clues are slight: a dog barking on a videotape, a drunken poet's rantings and Manwaring's instincts, which are not diminished by such distractions as the chaste (though regularly propositioned) Vicki, the charms of a pretty local animal doctor or his dreadful mother. Irvine, a former TV producer, gives his assorted media types nasty hearts and souls. Even the gutsy, gifted Kevin occasionally succumbs to sexist cretinism; only Vicki comes across as genuinely nice. Both are very welcome on the scene.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

First of a new series from an author whose usual turf is Salt Lake City and its Mormon denizens (The Spoken Word, 1992, etc.). The tiny religious farming community of Defiance, Idaho--an outpost of the town of Ellsworth--also has a Mormon history. The forest fire that wipes out its entire population drawns the attention of the Los Angeles bureau of the ABN-TV network. Ambitious reporter Vicki Garcia, field producer Keith Mainwaring, cameraman Lew Holland, and crew find a story more complex and tragic than the one they came for. Big business, in the form of Bonneville Industries, had been pressing for water rights from a reluctant Defiance. But Ellsworth's mayor and fire and police chiefs, as well as a lot of others, wanted Bonneville's factory, hoping it would revive their dying town. Was the fire accident or arson? Keith pursues answers between frantic calls to various bosses; his discovery of a bullet- wounded dog in burnt-out Defiance; Vicki's ploys for more on-air time; frenetic to-and-froing in various decrepit vehicles; rushed meals in decrepit diners. Keith finally gets his story, but not before the reader gets a hard look at some sleazy TV bigwigs and a bottom-line code of ethics. Choppy, even garbled narration, but compelling almost all the way. Keith Mainwaring is an attractive character with a promising future. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Irvine, the author of the successful Moroni Traveler series, here draws upon his experience in the television industry. Kevin Mainwaring is a news producer whose story on the fiery extinction of a southern Idaho religious sect uncovers evidence of mass murder. Irvine effectively captures the glum ambience of an isolated western town, and his story evokes echoes of the Branch Davidian holocaust. Unfortunately, the novel's characters come across as being secondary to the setting. Though Mainwaring is a likable-enough amateur sleuth, Irvine's attempts to show his hero's softer side--repeated references to Manwaring's dog, Buttons--seem forced and ineffective. Nevertheless, readers who have enjoyed Irvine's Traveler novels will want to check out his latest offering. Marginally recommended. Elliott Swanson

The author of the "Moroni Traveler" series begins a new series that features Kevin Manwaring, a field producer for a TV news program. Investigating a deadly Idaho forest fire of suspicious origin, Kevin becomes the next target of a killer.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.