A Slow Fire Burning: The addictive new Sunday Times No.1 bestseller from the author of The Girl on the Train

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The battle lines were then drawn between those who sneered at the naivete of readers who count fictional characters among their “friends,” and others who insisted that such sneering was elitist. There wasn’t a moment that I felt like giving up, but neither was I in a hurry to burn the midnight oil working through the outstanding text. But the biggest problem is that this narrative is framed as a mystery without delivering the pleasures of a mystery. Say what you will about Hannibal Lecter, but up until the dinner hour, he’d be an entertaining companion, even someone you might consider a “friend.

This book can be tricky to follow at times due to intricate character lines and the book within the book premise, so be prepared to focus. Like that earlier novel, A Slow Fire Burning incorporates multiple points of view, potentially unreliable narrators, and the perspectives of marginalized characters. The book asks the question, if you were offered the chance to right some terrible wrong that had been done to you, how far would you go? It took a while for me to realise quite how big the novel had become, and to appreciate what that would mean for me. But that is the nature of this sort of work, criticism and praise are subjective, earnings are not neatly related to hours worked – I had plenty of experience of being completely ignored before I found success.I found the last half of the book to be real good as everything unfolded and came together in some shocking revelations. Early in the book, one of the women mentions how old books are slowly self-combusting, alluding to the deterioration that occurs inside paper. Because of her proximity, Irene observed secret interactions between Angela, Theo, and Carla, and suspects that there are nefarious elements in the family. When I think back on this book, there was one character who said something that if it was not said might have changed quite a bit of the book.

We also are given glimpses into small segments of a best selling mystery written by one of the characters. It was the pacing and the large cast of unlikable and unreliable narrators that bogged this one down for me a bit. The night Daniel died, Carla picked up Theo’s kitchen knife and one of his scarves and walked to Daniel’s to discuss the graphic novel.Miriam Lewis, a reclusive woman who lives on the boat next to Daniel’s, finds the body, and police confirm that Daniel likely died either late Friday night or early Saturday morning. And she was the central character in If It Bleeds, a novella in the 2020 collection of the same name. The victim’s aunt, Carla Myerson, is a frosty, resentful woman, but as it turns out she has good reasons for her emotional stinginess. It’s clearly a case of murder, so for the police it’s now simply a case of identifying who had both the opportunity and the motive. After a young man is found murdered in a houseboat in London, it brings to the forefront three women who have unique and complicated connections to him.

He’s antisocial and fantasized over her but nothing indicates that they were involved other than her husband mentioning that as a motive to take the heat for his wife killing Daniel. Theo Myerson and his wife Carla, who had the start of an incredible marriage, until their young son Ben died accidentally at only 3 years of age. These are out main characters and they connect to each other in ways both predictable and unpredictable. But the reason I frame it in this way is that it came and went before I’d realised that that's what it was. I recommend this one for anyone looking for in parts a character study, mystery, suspense/thriller - you won't regret it!When a young man is found brutally murdered in his houseboat, an investigation immediately ensues and we are introduced to three main suspects, all females who each seem to have plenty of motive, opportunity and means to commit the heinous crime! Theo also supplies the police with the interesting tidbit that he saw a girl, covered in blood, walking on the towpath during the time period when the murder had been committed. The title, “A Slow Fire Burning” reflects the emotional simmering of the female characters, all who have reasons for revenge. If you have a success on that kind of scale, I think it is natural to feel that it is in some sense undeserved, or that one has been disproportionately rewarded for one’s efforts! As in her earlier novels, including the 2015 blockbuster, “The Girl on a Train,” Hawkins relies on a zigzag storytelling style where we readers hear multiple perspectives on the same events courtesy of a third-person narrator who has access to the thoughts of different characters.

With a cameo appearance from Lippman’s detective, Tess Monaghan, this is smart and many faceted, a devastating implication of one man’s self-deception, and creepy as hell. The “fire” that’s burning in Hawkins’s title isn’t the only thing about her latest novel that’s slow. When Irene reads it, she's infuriated by "all the to-ing and fro-ing, all that jumping around in the timeline. The combination of intriguing mystery and fleshed out and equally intriguing characters was superbly executed and really elevated this rating for me.

It’s deliciously twisty and just when you think everything has been resolved, there’s one more twist waiting. Theo and Carla have an unhealthy marriage that appears on and off due to an accidental death of their 3 year old son left in the care of her sister Angela and her son Daniel. And, with the exception of a clever plot twist at the very end of this novel, its revelations don’t merit its ornate complications. Cain’s crime noirs weren’t packed with amiable people and cheery settings, but it’s the very operatic obsessiveness of his corrupt characters, the intensity of his dead-end settings and over-the-top dialogue that make masterpieces like “Double Indemnity” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice” irresistible.