In the first of a wave of books written by

real workers about real jobs, fireman

Dennis Smith held a million readers spell-

bound in his best-selling Report from

Engine Co. 82, chronicling the reality of

the firefighters day from kids false alarms

to the roaring inferno of a major fire. That

book was just a beginning.

In The Final Fire, Dennis Smith has

turned to fiction, adding human drama to

a suspense-filled story of a threatened

strike of New York City firemen and the

subsequent fires that sweep the city and

almost destroy it. He is working with

major themes here as well as a taut, fast-

paced story of two brothers, hoth firemen,

caught in a political battle that rages as

unchecked as a fire on a windy day: cor-

ruption among city officials in an election

year, the unspoken and unaware rivalry

between brothers with different ideolo-

gies, and the price that one must pay for

an act of conscience or, perhaps, for the

avoidance of such an act. "Dammit," Jerry

asks when the holocaust has finally sub-

sided, "why don t we listen to the voices

within us? ls it all like the Phoenix? Either

brightness or ash?"

Jerry and Tom Ritter are the last broth-

ers left in a poor Bronx Irish family that

has already lost two sons to freak acci-

dents. They re close, but their lives have

moved in different dircetions. Tom is a

family man, happily inarried with four