‘Through the Fire’ enjoyable despite quibbles

  Wow. Shawn Grady certainly knows how to craft a story.
  “Through the Fire,” the first novel by the Reno firefighter and paramedic, follows the young, Irish and somewhat iconoclastic Reno firefighter Aidan O'Neill (I’m seeing a resemblance here, and I’ve never even met Grady) as he helps fight a rash of arson fires. There are subplots, of course — relationships with girlfriends, relationships with family members, an accident involving Aidan's firefighter father, an accident involving Aidan himself — some of which seem completely unrelated to the main plot, but all of which are neatly (but not excessively neatly, for which Grady gets points) tied together in a resolution that should satisfy both the reader and, the reader feels, Aidan O'Neill. Along the way, Grady supplies plenty of action and detail and just enough suspense to make the reader want to learn the truth, at least as the novel sets it forth.
  So far, so good — and so far impressive, especially for a first novel from a writer who comes from a somewhat unexpected place, fire stations not normally being packed with aspiring novelists.
  Three things bothered me, however. One is the seems-like-he’s-trying-too-hard tendency of Grady to use complex — even, at times, obscure — words or phrasing when a simple choice would suffice, a tendency that actually disrupts the narrative while the reader considers the meaning instead of reading over it or picking it up in context. Some examples: “His expression flicked like the pixilation of an image.” Or “Piceous smoke surged from the overpass, sunlight coruscating off an overturned semi.”
  Huh? Sort of reminds me of the police-ese “abrasions and contusions” when “scrapes and bruises” provide a more powerful image.
  Related to this is the tendency of Grady to use firefighter jargon. “I dropped my turnout boots from the back of the rig to the app-bay floor” is easy enough to pick up in context, but again, simpler language would be more meaningful.
  My third quibble? That “Through the Fire” has an awful lot of fires. One might expect that from a novel that’s set in a fire station, but not if said fire station is in Reno and one is familiar with the Biggest Little City in the World. One of Reno’s most charming aspects is its quaintness, its air of serenity (especially compared to Las Vegas) when one gets beyond the sometimes-bustling Virginia Street, and so much action at the fire department is at odds with that image, if maybe necessary to the action of the novel.
  So my advice is this: If you know Reno well, just sort of forget what you know. Have a dictionary handy, and you’re likely to find great enjoyment in “Through the Fire.”