Detective Paddy Durr is back in Burnt to a Crisp, Michael O'Keefe's third installment in the Durr series. This time out, life hasn't gotten any easier for Paddy and his heroic wife, Mairead. She is near death from 9/11 cancers, contracted from her time volunteering at Ground Zero after the attacks nineteen years earlier. Paddy is distraught, operating under the prospect of losing her.
An enemy from within the NYPD has bared her fangs and is coming after his job. Dr. Deborah Levine is a department psychiatrist out to get Paddy's guns taken away, in retribution for scorning her sexual advances a year before. She tried then without success, but this time she has the power of the corrupt mayor and his insidious wife's backing.
Through all of this, Paddy has just caught an Arson/Triple Homicide that no one but him and his partner seem to want solved. A drug lord from the neighborhood has placed an embargo on the witnesses, refusing to let them tell Durr what he already knows. He has a suspect and a motive, but only reluctant witnesses. Forensic evidence is at a premium, but when fire is a killer's modus operandi, there is little left that didn't burn away in the flames.
With cancer destroying his personal life, and a vindictive doctor trying to end his career, the clock is ticking. Durr will need a miracle to save his wife and career, and some luck and old-school detective work to solve his case and give his innocent victims justice. But time isn't on Paddy's side, and he has learned not to expect a miracle from a God he is sure has forsaken him.
It's no wonder Durr is Burnt to a Crisp.
