A Friend in the Fire by Gregory Ashe and C.S. Poe

Narrated by Garrett Kiesel

When we last saw Rufus O’Callaghan and Sam Auden at the end of Gregory Ashe and C.S Poe’s A Friend in the Dark, they had a blazing row which ended with Sam walking out of Rufus’ apartment and his life. Well, as A Friend in the Fire is book two in the Auden and O’Callaghan series, it will come as no surprise that they’re destined to meet again, but after a bitter argument and three months apart, it’s going to take a while for them to trust each other again.

After Sam left, he went back to his somewhat nomadic lifestyle, and when we catch up with him, he’s pitched up in a back-of-beyond town with an impossible-to-pronounce name (!) in deepest Missouri. He hasn’t heard from Rufus once in the past three months (Rufus never gave Sam his number, so Sam can’t reach out) – so the last thing Sam expects is a call from a panicked-sounding Rufus asking for help.

Rufus hasn’t been doing so well since Sam left. His issues with anxiety have worsened and he’s fallen into depression; he’s tired, lonely and even more of a mess than before. Sam was one of the few people ever to genuinely care about Rufus, he was someone he felt he could risk being himself with – and he misses him a lot. On this particular day, he’s on his way out of his crappy apartment building when he sees a piece of paper sticking out of his mailbox. It’s a shock when he sees what’s written there; in an unfamiliar hand is a note offering “information on Daisy”, his mother, who was killed seventeen years earlier. She was far from a good mother, but even so, she deserves justice, and Rufus, determined to find out what he can, arrives at the assigned time and place only to be set upon by a thug with a knife. He recognises his assailant as someone he helped put behind bars – and barely manages to get away with his life.

Sam and Rufus’ reunion is a little awkward to start with, but they soon start to fall back into their old pattern of wisecracking (Rufus) and grumpy snark (Sam). Rufus explains that the case they’d solved during the summer had made him realise that he wasn’t really over his mother’s death – and that no matter that she was a terrible parent, he needs answers so he can find closure and move on. After Sam left, Rufus started asking around the NYPD to see what he could find out, but had turned up nothing – until he received the note a few days earlier. It can’t be a coincidence that just weeks after he started asking questions, someone tried to have him killed. But who – and why?

As Sam and Rufus start looking into Daisy’s murder, Rufus is disturbed to learn it wasn’t an isolated incident, but was one of a string of murders of sex workers in the late 90s and early 00s in an area of Central Park known as The Ramble. Rufus knows some of the prostitutes who still work that patch – some of them knew Daisy and knew him as a kid, and he and Sam had asked some of them for help during their investigation into the sex trafficking ring they brought down in the summer. So they return to The Ramble now, seeking to find out more about Daisy and who might have killed her.

But when another working girl is murdered, and some of Daisy’s former ‘colleagues’ turn up dead, it’s clear that whoever was responsible for the earlier spate of killings is back – and they’ll stop at nothing to prevent Rufus from finding out the truth.

As with the first book, A Friend in the Fire combines an intriguing, well-constructed mystery with the continued development of the relationship between Sam and Rufus, and the authors achieve a good balance between the mystery and romantic elements in the story. Both men are likeable but damaged, misfits who somehow fit together and have found, in each other, someone who makes them want to do and be better. Rufus is kind of adorkable; he’s whip-smart (but doesn’t think he is) and a bit of a wiseass, he likes to read and learn, but he’s lived a very solitary life and has never had anyone in his corner – until Sam. Sam is big, gruff and surprisingly insightful, with almost no verbal filter and a tendency towards brutal honesty, but despite that, his past is still a bit of a mystery, and the fact that he’s not prepared to open up to Rufus about it becomes a bone of contention between them late in the book. Hints are dropped that Sam’s secrets are pretty dark (given his character is written by Gregory Ashe, I can’t say that surprises me!) and I really hope we’ll find out more in book three.

The thing I enjoyed most about Garrett Kiesel’s performance in A Friend in the Dark was his interpretation of the two leads, and I can say the same thing here. The gravelly tone he gives Sam is a good fit for the character, conveying his physical size and take-no-prisoners attitude; and he really seems to ‘get’ Rufus, infusing his snarky comments with just the right amount of cheek, but also communicating his vulnerability and deep-seated insecurities. The secondary cast is appropriately characterised, and although Rufus’ dialogue and the narrative still sound a little too similar at times, I didn’t notice that happening as often this time around as I did in the first book. Also absent this time – those long, unnecessary pauses. The pacing is perhaps a little on the fast side, but not horribly so, and overall, it’s a decent performance without any major problems. But I want a bit more than that in an audiobook, especially when I’m listening to books by authors I rate as highly as these two.

It probably sounds like damning with faint praise, but “good, not great” is my verdict on the performance in this one. Still, A Friend in the Fire is an intriguing and well-executed mystery featuring a pair of engaging protagonists who share a sense of humour and a deep and genuine emotional connection. I’ll definitely be back for A Friend in the Glass next year to find out what fate has in store for Auden and O’Callaghan next!

Caz