Heat is a below-average suspense novel from 1994, with a predictable plot and no character development. As an audio cassette, it runs to 3 hrs, which is long enough to give a good account of the storyline. The protagonist is an ex-Drug Enforcement Administration agent named Jesse Warden who has been falsely imprisoned. In return for release, he agrees to help investigate a strange church- based clan that has taken over a town in Idaho. The clan turns out to be a group of white supremacists named the Aryan Universe; they have accumulated massive weaponry and constructed a heavily fortified mountain that overlooks the town. The church is used to indoctrinate children and adults and prepare them for some presumed armed conflict.

Here's the basic plot. Jesse infiltrates the group and gains their trust; he also forms a love relationship with his landlady (a single widow), with whom he has sex on his first night in his new digs. He manages to uncover their plans, and locates many millions of dollars the leaders have socked away (where the money came from is not clear). Then, with plastic explosives, bombs, timers and automatic weapons supplied unquestioningly by his police colleagues, he singlehandedly destroys the mountain compound, killing the cult leaders who try to stop him, and escaping with the merry widow in a conveniently placed airplane, armed with new passports, false identities, and the millions he's managed to steal.

The predictable plot offers little in the way of compensation. What's more, too much is just not credible. Why for example would this woman, a member of the white supremacy group, unquestioningly follow Jesse as he plans to destroy them? Was she converted away from beliefs in white supremacy? (Experienced readers may expect her to be a double agent working for the Universal Aryans, but such plot twists are not to be found in this work). Why would Jesse's police cronies gladly supply him with enough weaponry to fight a small war? And why does no one raise the question of what crimes (if any) the group was committing that justified their wholesale destruction?

This book was published after the siege and slaughter of a fundamentalist religious group in Waco Texas, when tactics of the DEA and FBI came under severe criticism. Perhaps the author patterned the plot after that armed conflict, but if so, his evident approval of the outcome took no notice of such criticism.

Reviewers at Amazon are quite enthused; some call it the best book they've ever read. That's awfully sad, and suggests this to be a work for people who seldom read books. Meanwhile, a few readers of a more critical nature state that this is one of the author's weaker works. Thus its flaws may not be a reason to steer clear of his other novels. ( )