Hell's Kitchen

Book excerpt: Writing as William Jeffries, New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Deaver, the “master of ticking-bomb suspense” (People), delivers a thrilling novel that “exposes the brutal side of the Big Apple” (Publishers Weekly). Every New York City neighborhood has a story, but what John Pellam uncovers in Hell's Kitchen has a darkness all its own. The Hollywood location scout and former stuntman is in the Big Apple hoping to capture the unvarnished memories of longtime Kitchen residents—such as Ettie Washington—in a no‑budget documentary film. But when a suspicious fire ravages the elderly woman’s crumbling tenement, Pellam realizes that someone might want the past to stay buried. As more buildings and lives go up in flames, Pellam takes to the streets, seeking the twisted pyromaniac who sells services to the highest bidder. But Pellam is unaware that the fires are merely flickering preludes to the arsonist's ultimate masterpiece, a conflagration of nearly unimaginable proportion, with Hell’s Kitchen­—and John Pellam—at its blackened and searing epicenter.