Every so often a writer of substantive talent appears through the smokey background to perk up our interest in firefighters and firefighting. George Pickett is just such a man....In The Brave you will come to know him and a valiant group of men as they speed from alarm to alarm in downtown New York, where the buildings are tall and for the most part old, where bums and drug addicts populate the streets, and where the fire companies hardly ever rest.