Review - Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts

Chasing Fire is Roberts' 2011 romantic suspense release.  Here we meet Rowan Tripp, a Missoula smoke jumper.  Smoke jumpers are elite firefighters who parachute into remote areas to combat wildfires.  Rowan is returning to Montana for the season with the death of her jump partner haunting her.  This season she meets up with rookie smoke jumper Gulliver Curry.  Rowan's rule of no fraternizing with fellow jumpers is forgotten with Gulliver.  But soon someone starts to blame Rowan for her partner's death and the fires of summer start to take on a sinister heat.

The good - Nora Roberts as always delivers a story with witty dialogue, humour, chemistry between characters, and a mystery that keeps the reader guessing.  I have to admit, I think I enjoyed the secondary romance between Lucas (Rowan's father) and Ella, a local high school principal, more than Rowan and Gull.  I liked Rowan at first, she seemed strong and capable without a harshness to her.  The mystery kept me guessing until the end.  I had the suspect narrowed down to two characters (A and B).  I thought it was character A at first but closer to the end, character B did a couple of things that made me think the story was going in another direction.  I was completely wrong, well-played Ms. Roberts, well-played.

The bad - Nora Roberts has gone from an auto-buy hardcover author to borrow hardcover at library and buy paperback to just borrow hardcover at library.  This book has not changed that.  I find that although her books are better written than most romance novels available, they have become very formulaic, starting with the heroine.  Roberts seems to favour three main female archetypes for her heroine.  This is really evident in her trilogies which usually features one archetype per book.  There is the nurturer who takes care of everyone and is protective of her charges.  A great example of this is Mia from Face the Fire (Three Sisters Island trilogy).  Next is the waif, she is the tender, innocent, damsel-in-distress that needs to be saved or shown how to save herself.  This describes Nell from Dance Upon the Air the first in the Three Sisters Island Trilogy.  Finally there is the crusader (Ripley from Heaven and Earth) who is strong, headstrong, independent and will take care of everything herself.  Rowan is the crusader, she does not want her friends to look out after her and will do everything herself.  Although I don't have a problem with any of these archetypes, I do get annoyed with them if they become too extreme.  I liked Rowan at first, but she became to harsh and bitchy at times.  When she was being interviewed by the police, I felt that she was way over the top in her reaction to them.  I get that she was annoyed about possibly being a suspect, but come on!  They weren't harassing her, they were just doing their job.

Roberts' story lines seem to have become formulaic as well.  Chasing Fire is no exception.  It involves a strong heroine, a romantic, wealthy (or financially sound) hero, a couple of chapters focused on an interesting or different career, and a murder.  Throw in a secondary romance and you have 450 pages of a story. I have found that for the last couple of books, I tend to skim the pages that focus on the career.  It at times feels like filler that I have read before rather than something that adds to the story. 

I will continue to read Nora Roberts' novels in hopes that the stories return to characters that are more fleshed out and stories that feel less formulaic.  She has the gift of storytelling and while this is not a keeper for me, it is still better than most authors out there.