Fires were breaking out all over greater Los Angeles. Suspicious fires. From the mid-1980s to the early '90s, dozens of retail businesses were bursting into flames. As the investigation unfolds, it has all the elements of a classic detective story: the serendipitous lead, the culling of suspects, the fortuitous fingerprint, the disastrous miscalculation, the carefully orchestrated surveillance and the artfully dodged surveillance and the inevitable bizarre twist.