Hidden in Smoke is the third book in the “Sharpe and Walker” series, which follow two arson investigators in LA. In this edition, the investigators are searching for a serial arsonist responsible for setting dozens of simultaneous fires near apartment buildings. But when a huge fire damages a busy freeway, bringing traffic in LA to a standstill, Sharpe and Walker add that case to their list. When a homicide is discovered during the investigation, superstar detective Eve Ronin is called in to assist, adding to the mix. There’s a dual plot here as well, interspersed with the arson investigation, and that works well to increase the suspense in both plots. This is a welcome addition to this series, definitely a huge improvement over the previous book. The writing is sharp (no pun intended), the dialogue is witty and appropriately sarcastic, and the plot will hold your interest. Loved this one! I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Gripping and intense, Hidden in Smoke is a combustible story that moves at a scorching pace and will ignite the thrill of the hunt in readers’ minds. Another fantastic book by Lee Goldberg, one of the most bankable authors in the genre for engaging, fun, smooth novels containing great characters and intriguing plots. All he does is churn out one great story after another.

An arsonist is setting fires at apartment buildings across Hollywood. Then a massive fire shuts down a major Los Angeles freeway. And just like that, arson investigators Sharpe and Walker are in the middle of the action, charged with finding those responsible. Could it be the same person causing havoc across the city or is there something more diabolical at play? Meanwhile, an old acquaintance of the two investigators is back in the fold and doing what he does best. Namely scheming and thieving. But this time, it could come back to burn them.

This third installment in the Sharpe and Walker series is as compelling and absorbing as the prior two. The banter between the two investigators is entertaining, their strengths are perfectly complimentary, and their investigative approaches are vastly different. But they form a brilliant team that gets the job done, usually with Walker having to make nice for all the people pissed off at Sharpe. It’s the interplay between the duo that makes this book, and this series, so much fun to read.

It also helps that the storylines are fire (pun intended) and the books well researched and written. I mean, it’s not often that someone throws together a serial arsonist, a world class cat burglar, delicious BBQ, big pharma, street artists, and the craziest museum you’ve ever heard about into a single book. But Goldberg pulls it off, seamlessly weaving it all together – and throwing in a few surprises and fan favorite characters – to construct a story that is equal parts amusing, anxiety-inducing and satisfying.

If you’re not reading Goldberg’s stuff, what are you waiting for? Get on it. Because I promise you a good time. And whatever he writes next, I’ll be first in line to grab a copy.

hank you, Thomas & Mercer, for the copy of Hidden In Smoke by Lee Goldberg. I loved Malibu Burning and Ashes Never Lie, books one and two in this series, so I was really looking forward to reading this one. I’m not sure why the writing in this one felt a little different, and there were parts that were distasteful to read. I loved both of the stories, and it seemed like the main characters in the ‘heist’ could be its own series! I loved how Eve Ronin made an appearance in this one too. If you’re looking for a clever story with three-dimensional characters, start this series! 4 stars

Former convict Danny Cole and Former US,Marshall Andrew Walker meet again in a fast-paced novel about getting true justice. This time they are working together, because the ends justify the means. They will bend the rules a bit to ensure that a greedy, rich man receives a punishment that he has deserved for a long time, a punishment that he was able to avoid until two people who usually oppose one another decide to work together. This was a quick, fun read.

Lee Goldberg has an incredible talent for cleverly plotted action thrillers. He is a screenwriter and his books are like a full cable series. It’s season three for Los Angeles County Sheriff arson investigators Sharpe (the arson expert) and Walker (the manhunter and former US Marshal). We get a reminder of season one in the beginning — back when a firefighting convict, Danny Cole, slipped away during a devastating Malibu blaze, but not before helping save two teenagers.

This time we have the older, cynical Walter Sharpe and younger Stetson-hatted Andrew Walker investigating a series of car fires in dingbat apartment buildings (mid-century, seismically vulnerable, two story apartments over carports, often with cool names on the front, many which collapsed after the Northridge earthquake) in one incredibly fiery night. They aren’t certain if the cars, tenants, style of buildings, or property owners were the targets.

Just as they’re zeroing in on a possible suspect and motive, there’s a spectular freeway fire (much like the real life November 2023 I-10 blaze) which started below the expressway in an area of questionable storage facilities (flammable pallets), rickety business shanties (recycling grease) and a homeless encampment (pirated electricity, open flame cooking devices, propane tanks, and sewage). The closed road is also a political hot potato and all sorts of officials (up to the governor) want to have the freeway rebuilt ASAP.

“Hidden in Smoke” works well as a standalone, but even the author suggests you’ll get a fuller experience if you read the first installment, “Malibu Burning.” Mr. Goldberg keeps us hyper-aware of the jurisdictional conflicts between the LA Sheriff’s Department, the LA County Fire Department, and the City of Los Angeles’ own Police And Fire Departments. Plus add in a few other municipal areas and teams like West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Sharpe is always wary of any political involvement and appearances; Walker just want to find the bad guy. Midway through, we get the guest stars: Eve Ronin and Duncan Pavone — from Goldberg’s other terrific 5 book “Eve Ronin” series, who also were in the Sharpe/Walker book two, “Ashes Never Lie.” They are Sheriff’s homicide investigators and get involved when a local who was living beyond his means (but near Eve’s Lost Hills station) is found dead.

We do have another story interwoven among the arson investigations: semi-villain and book one secret survivor Danny Cole and his heist crew get to teach us about horology (the world of fine timepieces) on a Japanese billionaire’s private island with a glass bridge that cracks as you walk over it (also a real thing — Google this for fun). Trust me, the Cole backstory all neatly fits in by the end.

As I mentioned, this Goldberg mystery moved like a TV series — keeping an open case in the background, introducing familiar characters, having the “crossover” episode, but always jumping to a newer action scene if a paperwork/forensic scene lagged. I absolutely love the Sharpe and Walker dynamic (I put my TBR aside as soon I received this thriller) and I already want a fourth book! 5 stars!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO No eye colors, just sleepy and bloodshot eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO Lee Goldberg meticulously knows the desert landscape of the hills surrounding Los Angeles.

Thank you to Thomas and Mercer and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!

I always have a great time reading a book from Lee Goldberg. Hidden in Smoke is the third book headlining Sharpe & Walker and featuring Ronin & Pavone. The intrepid arson investigators are a great set of characters and the story gets even better when the duo from the homicide squad gets involved. I love the bantering and humor but also the authors eye for detail and imagination when it comes to creating a story. I can really recommend this series and I thank Thomas & Mercer and Netgalley for letting me have an advance copy of this great book.

This book is third in the series and it did not disappoint! The tie-ins from the first two, as well as Eve and Duncan from the Eve Ronin series just makes it even better! This story twists and turns around. I did not expect the ending at all.
Great read!!

I was thrilled when I found this on NetGalley!

His books read like an action TV series. And it was also fun to meet the main characters of his Eve Ronin series.

The fact that some pharmaceutical companies keep their prices unnecessarily high was also discussed...

The only drawback to his books are the too detailed descriptions of the environment where the story takes place at that moment.

I'm a big Lee Goldberg fan. I think Eve Ronin is one of the great contemporary California cop characters around these days. That said, it pains me to report that HIDDEN IN SMOKE is a very long way from Lee Goldberg's best.

There's something about the book that feels hasty and rushed, as if he was under such pressure from his publisher to get it out that he just pushed this thing out there as quickly as he could and washed his hands of it. Parts of the book didn't even read like Goldberg had written it, and I had to wonder more than once if his publisher might have called in a bit of ghostwriting help to meet whatever publication schedule they had established.

The narrative is frankly rather jumbled, jumping back and forth between two unrelated story lines which ultimately mate up. Well... sort of. The characters feel cartoony — not at all typical of Goldberg's characters — which is another thing which made me wonder occasionally if he had 'help' writing this one.

As much as I love most of Goldberg's work, this is a hard book to recommend. Read Goldberg by all means, but look to his other titles before you look to this one.

I was not familiar with this prolific author, Lee Goldberg, nor this series about Sharpe & Walker. I picked it up as a fast and dirty police procedural after a few more worthy reads, wanting some instantly engaging junk food reading. I actually really struggled to like or relate to the characters in the first half, but it got there in the end, as you'd expect from a writer with so many books behind them.

Hidden in Smoke mashes together two storylines that probably would make more senses if I had read the previous books. One is a James Bond-esque museum heist of a rare watch on a Japanese island, the other is a series of fires in Los Angeles: "This is urban arson, so we know the fires have got to be about revenge, money, or hiding a crime." There was fair bit of cognitive dissonance jumping between the two sorts of storytelling, but as I mentioned, they come together in the end.

The tone felt a bit brusque and flippant: "They wore matching blue LAFD windbreakers and matching sour expressions that suggested they both had heartburn." The characters felt a bit cartoony: "She was both the muscle and the eye candy on Danny's jobs. She felt cheated if she didn't get to sleep with someone or taste some blood along the way." There was dogwhistle misogyny in some of the writing about women: "Her breath smelled like a wet dishrag" or "I ran up the street screaming 'Fire,' barefoot and bare-assed, my cooch out there for everybody to see. It was the beacon that led everybody to safety." Probably the best bit of descriptive prose was about concrete: "Underneath the freeway, all the rubble was gone, exposing the damaged, crumbling pillars and the savaged underbelly of the overpass, where the blaze had violently clawed at the concrete like a ferocious animal, exposing the rebar and pebbly aggregate, the bones and sinew of the structure."

So I guess all in all, not what I was wanting or imagining, and slow to read as a result, but for fans of Lee Goldberg, I bet it scratches their itch. Maybe it'd appeal more to men...

Hidden in Smoke by Lee Goldberg is the third in the Sharpe and Walker series. As arson investigators, this time they are tasked with trying to find the arsonist behind multiple apartment fires. Then, when another fire starts near a homeless camp and shuts down the major highway above it, things get serious. As their investigation continues they bring in Eve Ronin to help with the police side. These stories get better and better and I hope continue for a long time.

I love this third installment in the Walker /Sharpe series, with Duncan and Eve, for the explosive
entwining plots. It’s also familiar to the fans of the series, and we got more than we could ask
for as we have three separate fires & explosions along with theft, murder and some great
barbecue that will have you checking that address to see if it might actually be there!
There are several stand out characters, beginning with my favorite,: Sharpe. He has some
great lines and has to really work hard to deal with some of the ‘investigators’ who might
be working against the best intentions of the capturing the crimes/criminals.
This book is one of brilliant quips and quotes, none of which I will be sharing until the
books meets the world.
Lastly, Eve, the decorated 26 year old ‘murder cop,’, begins to show some of her
maturity and her innate investigatory chops.
What can I say except that this is another ‘hot’ book !
My thanks to Thomas & Mercer via NetGalley for the
download copy of this book for review purposes.

Thanks to Lee Goldberg, Thomas & Mercer, and NetGalley for access to the Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love this series. Sharpe and Walker are great characters (along with Eve Ronin and others) and the action is associated with arson and arson investigations, which I find is a refreshing change from homicide detective based stories.

The plot involves a series of carport arsons, a freeway fire and a stolen watch. The plot comes together nicely as all three threads intertwine to this story and some continued action from the first novel. The dialog and pacing are top notch, and I especially like the interplay between the characters. Recommended.

This book is the third in the excellent Sharpe and Walker series and can be read independently of the other two, although action from the first book is mentioned and will give away the ending of that book.

Hidden in Smoke by Lee Goldberg is the latest in the very enjoyable Sharpe & Walker series that began in Malibu Burning. If you have not read that book, you really need to as a major character from that book is resurrected here. In fact, as the author note at the start of this read explains, the ending of that book is addressed here on page one.

Danny Cole is alive and well in Japan, though he might be a tad bored. After several surgeries, he has a different face and has various names to go by as he moves about. The 35-year-old thief and grifter is retired and is, per doctor’s orders, trying to find inner peace and tranquility as he sits in the bathhouse. Any hope of that is gone when Los Angeles County Sheriff Department Arson Investigator Andrew Walker lumbers into the water next to him.

Walker isn’t there to arrest him. In fact, Walker wants Danny Cole to finish the job he started. If he does and gets even for what happened, he will help Walker as a certain drug price will come way down. A drug that Walker’s young son desperately needs to control his seizures.

For Danny, it is a chance to once again, experience the thrill of his old life. It will take months to pull off this heist. Doing so is one of the two main storylines in the book.

The other is dealing with the aftermath of a string of fires across Los Angeles. A number of fires has been set and caused damage at car ports in West Hollywood. The car ports had apartment buildings above them which provided fuel for the car port fire. Fire after fire happened and Walker and Waller and Sharpe are working the case when a catastrophic freeway fire pulls them onto another case.

A portion of I-10 in downtown Los Angeles burns and the freeway is severely damaged. Various materials were stored under the multilane overpass as the area was subleased to a business which also leased the area out to others. That resulted in folks running their small businesses under it. There was also a homeless encampment nearby and underneath the bridge.

With such a mix of fuels, it isn’t surprising a horrific multi alarm fire erupted. It burned so hot that the freeway in that section is severely damaged and will have to be repaired to the cost of millions and considerable time.

It has resulted in massive gridlock and a city wide and beyond traffic nightmare for residents. LA County Sheriff Richard Lansing reassigns Walker and Sharpe to the case as he sees a chance to score points with the public after they are tasked with determining what happened. He wants the fire investigated fast and, as he wants to be Mayor, is using, Walker and Sharpe to restore his scandal filled reputation. It’s complicated and Sharpe is sure that no matter what they find and do, they are going to get burned.

Not to mention, they have a case already that they have put a lot of legwork in on and have identified the suspect. Not that it matters as Lansing wants the best on the case, and Walker and Sharpe are the best. Seeing that other case to the finish line is not an option, so they get to work on the freeway fire, and find far more than expected.

Hidden in Smoke is another complicated and fast moving solidly good read. There are many moving parts here and they slowly come together as Danny works on his heist and Walker and Sharpe work their cases.

Not only is the book an enjoyable read, it makes you think as you drive under the overpasses in your city what could, potentially, happen. That fact alone is more than enough to creep you out.


My reading copy came from the publisher, Thomas & Mercer, by way of NetGalley, with no expectation of a review.


Kevin R. Tipple ©2025

Excellent! I love how this book brought in Eve Ronin (I love her). I cannot wait for the next installment!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review!

Legendary Lee Goldberg has given us another fiery Sharpe & Walker adventure. It's a scorcher of a story. Of course, to be fair, we'd expect nothing less than that from Goldberg at this point. There are two different tales 'Hidden in Smoke' in this book which Goldberg deftly ties together at the end.
There are scenes of dramatic derring-do which will knock your socks off. The action is so hot it presents Goldberg with the perfect opportunity to reunite his fantastic foursome of Sharpe, Walker, Ronin, and Pavone. It's an exciting story bolstered by the usual charm, whimsy, and wit of Goldberg.
Thanks to Thomas & Mercer & NetGalley for the advance reading copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book has Danny Cole returning to help Walker and a second storyline with a freeway arson. The arson part was very good with very good deduction by both Sharpe and Walker in their ways. The Danny part was cinematic, forced and felt like an unnecessary appendage. While I liked the first book in the series with Cole where he was embedded in the plot here he is just sticking out.

I am so pleased that two of my favorite detectives, Eve Ronin and Duncan Pavone, are working alongside two of my favorite arson investigators, Walter Sharpe and Andrew Walker (although I honestly haven’t read any books with any other arson investigators) in this third mystery thriller in the series by the always entertaining Lee Goldberg. In this all too short story, Sharpe and Walker must find a serial arsonist after dozens of Hollywood apartment buildings are set on fire on a single night. The arson investigators begin the hunt on their own until a massive fire engulfs a freeway and Detectives Ronin and Pavone are assigned to the case. Now they must determine the cause of the freeway fire, catch the torcher who is out for revenge, and end his goal to endanger the city.
Hidden in Smoke is fast moving with clever dialogue and engaging characters. Walker is a stetson-wearing former US Marshall. Sharpe is the senior arson investigator who is assigned Walker when Walker transfers to the department as a rookie. Walker tries to win Sharpe’s respect and asks his new partner lots of questions about fires, fire fighting and fire investigation. They have learned how to work well together as a team since their first investigation together. Eve Ronin, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide detective,is the main character in a series of her own. In the first book in which her character appears, she arrests a movie star and is rewarded with a promotion and, to her dismay, a TV show based on her exploits that brings her recognition and fame.
The action is exciting with twists and turns, the characters are engaging and likeable, the arson plot is interesting and adds the element of danger. Hidden in Smoke is a fun, quick read with a good story to tell. I look forward to the next Sharpe and Walker book as well as the next book centering on Eve Ronin and Duncan Pavone.
I would like to thank Thomas & Mercer, Publishers as well as NetGalley for an advance copy of Hidden in Smoke.

My Best Read for the year comes at the end of 2024. Thank you Lee Goldberg, NetGalley and the Publishers for this early Christmas gift. All 3 books in the Sharpe and Walker series get a resounding 5 * from me. This is just perfect and hugely entertaining.
The author has written many series and I am amazed by his consistency of plot, characters and keeping up with the latest trends. It is well researched, and it was surprising to learn some things like the asthma inhaler with geo-locator. I first thought that the author had made it up. As always the plot is brilliant. There are 2 different tracks, one with the Sharpe and Walker investigating the carport arson and the freeway arson and the other one , the heist by Danny Cole, the con-artist. I was hold my breath through the daring heist. Eve and Duncan make and appearance, but they have a much smaller role than in the previous book "Ashes never lie". I am not complaining as this is Walker and Sharpe's story.

I can't wait for the next book by Lee Goldberg.

Someone’s starting a series of fires across part of Los Angeles including one that cripples a major freeway. Meanwhile, Walker asks a favour of an old ‘friend’. ‘Hidden in Smoke’ is another solid and thoroughly enjoyable page turner exploring the grey area of justice. It’s also a bit prescient given an American health insurer CEO was executed and people from both sides of the political spectrum think the man charged was justified.

I breezed right through this book with its tight plotting, naturalistic dialogue and well-paced action. I also love the banter between characters. Best of all Eve Ronin and her scene-stealing partner Duncan Pavone make a cameo.

Aside from the characters and mystery is also the strong sense of place in Lee Goldberg’s writing. As always Los Angeles is the star and I find my reading experience is enhanced searching street view. I also guessed immediately that MONA was the inspiration for a fictional Japanese museum (and sure enough confirmed in the author’s note).

When’s the next one, cause I’m looking forward to more!

Thanks to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the ARC.