Who is Dick Byrne?
“He looked up in time to see a pair of fire boots clumsily find their footing on the pavement as the heavyset figure of Dick Byrne stepped from the taxi and stood, framed by a pair of hulking fire engines, before the devastated home. The retired fire marshal looked thrown together in his rumpled winter coat, creased corduroys, and rubber boots but, as he turned into the beam cast by Engine 23’s halogen search light, Dawson could see that beneath the tousled gray hair was a resolute face set in stone.”
—“The Black Box” (2025)
Fighting fires is in his blood.
Richard “Dick” Byrne has retired from a distinguished career as one of the most decorated fire marshals in the proud history of Washington, DC, but he hasn’t finished fighting yet. Now, Byrne investigates arson cases for the District’s Metropolitan Police Department—and murder is the motive.
A chain-smoking Scottish expat with a lifetime of experience in the fire service—from the Lothian & Borders Fire Service of Scotland to the US National Fire Academy at Emmitsburg—Byrne is an expert in chemistry, thermodynamics, and the fire sciences. He reads a fire scene as others would read a book.
He’s mastered the skills to uncover secrets hidden in ashes and possesses an even more astonishing talent for solving the mysteries they bring to light. But the hot-tempered Byrne has a reputation for being as combustible as he is uncompromising, and he’s made as many enemies as allies.
The Dick Byrne series of mystery stories celebrates the invention of the classic detective story, the drama of the murder investigation, and the matchless heroism of the firefighter. When fire leads to fatality in the District of Columbia, the Metropolitan Police turn to Dick Byrne. They know he will stop at nothing to find the killer.
Brian A. Dixon’s expert arson investigator Dick Byrne made his debut in the pages of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, one of the oldest and most influential magazines of mystery and crime fiction in the world. His undying mission to protect his community continues wherever great detective stories are found.