Some Like It Hot

By Paul Gray

THE FINAL FIRE by DENNIS SMITH

239 pages. Saturday Review Press.

$7.95.

Pyromania is the irresistible urge to set fires. There is no comparable term for the irresistible urge to extinguish them. Whatever that mania is called, New York City Fireman Dennis Smith, 35, has it in its most extreme form. In Smith's view, where there is fire there is always smoke--and it is his sworn duty to drown the flames and clear the air. As a zealous fire fighter, he has been taking care of urban conflagrations for twelve years. To dissipate the clouds of rumor and misinformation, he wrote Report from Engine Co. 82, a bestselling documentary that described the routine and anguish of men whose job is actuarially the most dangerous in the U.S. As if his occupation were not hazardous enough, Smith has now produced a novel, a trial by fire of a different sort. On the evidence, he earns solid if un spectacular probationary status.

Set in the indeterminate present, The Final Fire posits a New York City that is almost as crisis-ridden as the real one. Hoping to embarrass the mayor, his opponent in an upcoming election, the Governor dangles a sinecure before the city fire fighters' union president. The asking price: a smoke eaters' strike. Although his men vote to stay on the job without a contract, their leader calls a work stoppage anyway. A holocaust follows.

Passionate Familiarity. So much for the public domain (a misreported vote actually did spur a 5 1/2-hour walk out by New York firemen in November 1973) Smith refracts this municipal mischief into the conflict of two fire-fighting brothers, Tom and Jerry Ritter. Tom is an introspective family man who wonders what Spinoza and Kant would say about union politics. Jerry swings through Manhattan's East Side, spouting Dylan Thomas and Yeats. Both vote against the strike, but only one sticks by his conscience -- and his hose.

When Smith describes the hellish hook and ladder chores, he writes with passionate familiarity. But his political drama is little more than a series of over drawn editorial cartoons. The Governor is a gross Manhattan Machiavelli, and the mayor speaks to confidential aides as if he were on Face the Nation: "I am sure you need not be reminded of the hard days we shared in the nearly three years of my administration..."

Such first-novel flaws slow Smith's pace. But they cannot obscure his paradoxical, poignant message: the man who is constantly asked to rescue his fellows cannot leave his post without breaking a social contract. In the final analysis, as in The Final Fire, the fireman can help everyone but himself. Paul Gray

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.