The second book in the Eddie LaCrosse series, taking place not too long after The Sword-Edged Blonde.
Eddie is asked for help by a woman he meets on the road, but the pair of them are promptly jumped by thugs — the woman dies after being unsuccessfully tortured for information, and Eddie himself is left for dead. When he comes to, he's naturally keen to track down the people responsible and do something about it, but since he doesn't know who they were or what they wanted, it's rather difficult.
At the same time, a weird religious group is moving into town, backed for no obvious reason by a nasty crime boss and incognito royalty.
Also, Eddie's girlfriend isn't being honest with him about something.
Naturally, it's all connected.
Burn Me Deadly provides examples of:
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Eddie has seen stranger things than dragons, but is adamant that dragons can't possibly exist, and that Father Tempcott's cult therefore consists of gullible morons. Dragons do, in fact, exist - although by the end of the book, they probably don't any more.
- Bookends: After the opening scenes of the book, Eddie is beaten to a pulp and spends a lot of time healing in the local temple of the Moon Goddess. At the book's climax, Liz is beaten and tortured and spends a lot of time (though not nearly as much time as Eddie did, she points out) healing in the same temple - where all the staff know their names because of Eddie's long visit.
- Crazy Survivalist: Eddie meets a family who live away from civilisation due to the firm belief that, one day soon, the allegedly iron-fisted King Archibald is going to come and take everything they own. In reality, Archibald is rather ineffectual, quite a long way away, and wouldn't really care one way or another about the survivalists. It turns out that the husband is actually a hypocrite about it, visiting the market in town from time to time without telling his wife. It causes... marital difficulties.Bella Lou: You were at the market? In town? [throws things at him] Completely self-sufficient, you said. Never let anyone even know we're here, you said. And now I find out you've been going to the market in town regularly?
Buddy: [steps back] Well, I had to—
Bella Lou: You had to lie to me? To our children? You had to do that? We live knee-deep in goat shit and dead leaves, and you sneak off to town? - Cult: Father Tempcott's group are basically a dragon cult, believing that dragons are real and will return to burn the whole world apart from the few faithful. They're a little bit right, since dragons are real and eggs have indeed survived, but they're wrong about dragons being basically gods — they're smart animals, and wouldn't care about cultists.
- Dirty Cop: Gary Bunson, Neceda's law officer, is quite bribable. However, he's not particularly evil about it — it's driven more by laziness and self-preservation than active greed, and while he's seldom useful, he doesn't do any harm. It briefly looks like he might break this pattern by hanging someone who Eddie thinks is innocent (or at least, coerced), but it turns out that Gary didn't actually have that one wrong. Eddie still thinks Gary didn't deserve a medal for it, though:Eddie: Gary, the killer came to you and confessed. You basically did nothing.
Gary: Yes, and I did it with alacrity and tact. I have a parchment that says so.
Eddie: And your conscience is okay with this?
Gary: [trying not to laugh] Eddie, I sold my conscience for a night with a trail whore when I was fifteen. Haven't seen it since, and wouldn't know what to do with it if it turned up. [plays with medal]. I also got a raise. - King Incognito: It turns out that "Nicky", whose infiltration of Tempcott's cult collides with Eddie's own, is actually Princess Veronica, trying to keep her brother Frederick in hand.
- Mercy Kill: At the end, Eddie kills Doug Candora, who has never-healing dragon burns all over him, on the grounds that even someone that evil shouldn't be left in that condition.
- Shout-Out: The title is a reference to the film Kiss Me Deadly (itself an adaptation of the almost-identically titled book, Kiss Me, Deadly. It starts with pretty much the same scenario — the protagonist giving assistance to a strange woman, then barely surviving an attack in which she dies. Even the bit about being pushed into a ravine with the woman's corpse is replicated, only Eddie is pushed along with a horse rather than a car.
- There's also one to the movie of The Maltese Falcon: the dragon eggs are often referred to as 'the fire that dreams are made of'. The final line of the movie (though not the book) is 'the stuff that dreams are made of', which is in turn a slightly mangled quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest.
- There Are No Coincidences: Averted — most things are connected, but not everything. Eddie assumes that the murder of Mother Bennings was orchestrated by the same people whose attack Mother Bennings healed him from, and not the marginally-connected guy who Gary Bunson is planning to execute. In fact, it really is the Open-and-Shut Case Gary thinks it is, and the killer's choice of victim had nothing to do with a connection to Eddie.
- Upper-Class Twit: Prince Frederick is known to only care about "drink, women, and games of chance, in that order" — which makes it surprising that he attends and supports Father Tempcott's dragon cult, and does seem to genuinely want Tempcott's approval. (Not enough to refrain from going into town and getting drunk, but enough to regret it afterwards). The need to deal with Frederick's foolishness is the primary reason his sister, Princess Veronica, is also present incognito — and why she's intending to depose him one day.
- Wound That Will Not Heal: Those who believe in dragons say that burns from their fire never heal and never stop hurting, no matter how much time passes. They're right. In fact, just touching an egg is sufficient, as one character who must now permanently wear gloves could attest.
