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[Jon Papernick], a Boston-based writer who is the author of the short-story collection "The Ascent of Eli Israel" throws a lot at his reader: history, references to the Jewish literary canon, racial tensions and religious divisions. Sometimes it is too much for the novel to bear. Moreover, its pages are crowded with characters whose only purpose appears to be to feed [Matthew]'s paranoia. For instance, the black youths who hang out on his Brooklyn front stoop appear regularly in the novel but do almost nothing apart from cursing Matthew's white presence. They grate on the reader's patience. And the sequencing of the book can be confusing and disorienting, with scenes constantly alternating between the present, the past and the delusional in the form of Matthew's blackouts, caused by his poor physical and emotional health. And the abundance of historical references put the brakes on the book's forward momentum. For the most part, though, it remains a fast-paced thriller, with a terrifying moment when Matthew realizes the magnitude of what he has done - and that not even the memory of his father can save him. Hinda Mandell is a writer living in Boston. In contrast to his father, Matthew is weak and without direction. He is a train-wreck waiting to happen, and the events in "Who by Fire" present a finely drawn picture of a human being unraveling. Matthew's search for self-worth goes awry and becomes a tortuous, dead-end adventure. He is portrayed as such a pathetic character, an individual who suffers from so much self-inflicted emotional and physical pain, that his turn to the dark side seems inevitable. Matthew is not a prime mover in the deadly conspiracy and is driven, not by ideology, but by his quest for acceptance. Papernick uses flashbacks that show the judge alternating between condemnation and disregard of his son and makes it clear that Matthew is in reality looking belatedly for the approval of his father, who "had tried to drill into him the ideals that his own hero Jabotinsky had preached: the concept of hadar - beauty, respect, self-esteem, politeness, faithfulness. "