Author Christopher Klim Home Page Category:  Mainstream Publisher: Hopewell Publications ISBN-10:  0972690654 Type: Fiction Pages: 240 Copyright: Mar 1 2004 Photojournalist Boot Means - the protagonist of Jesus Lives in Trenton - tracks a serial arsonist across Texas. Someone is setting the buildings aflame and burning innocent children, and with each spectacular fire, Boot Means draws closer to danger. Only he knows that time is running short. With Klim's offbeat and gritty suspense, Everything Burns delves into the psyche of a true pyromaniac. Boot Means stopped his motorcycle at the curb and jumped off. Ladder trucks hummed outside a line of shops in Concho's commercial district. A hardware store on Harp Street stood gutted, and wisps of gray smoke crept from the second floor apartment windows. He was late. The flames were already knocked down. That's how the firemen put it—'knocked down’—as if they had toppled a big bully and left him for dead. Excerpt Boot stared at the floor in the Concho Medical Center emergency room. He stopped looking at the swollen pink and black slashes across his palms. The pain throbbed with the beats of his heart. He felt woozy. The stench of burning flesh lingered, teasing every sense, but it wasn’t his hands that stunk. They didn’t have an odor; nothing in the sterile room seemed to possess a scent. It was that kid on Armada Road, burning alive. He caught the smell from miles away—skin, bones, everything cooking. It was part of his brain now. Memory played no favorites.

Jason Price Everett, The Circle Magazine
Everything Burns is just as good as, if not better than, its illustrious predecessor. … the bullet train of his prose is even slicker and sexier than it was the last time. … I particularly adore above all else in Mr. Klim’s voluminous literary arsenal: his staccato, terse, jerkily brilliant array of dialogue. … I would advise my current audience to run, not walk, to their nearest bookstore.

Maggie Harding, BookCrazy Radio
Klim manages to integrate wisecracking characters and dramatic action without confusing the reader. Though not an easy task, he has employed the same engaging combination of contrasts that we enjoyed in such shows as MASH and NYPD Blue.

Robert Gover, author of the cult classic One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding
Everything Burns is Klim's second novel featuring Boot Means–raised in foster care, an outsider yet resourceful and wise beyond his years, a unique and potent character who is earning his place in the pantheon of mythic American legends.