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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Miriam is a middle aged woman, living just several boats down from the boat where Daniel is brutally murdered. She sees, hears and knows a lot. She also has a vendetta against at least one of the characters. This is a very cerebral mystery so I wouldn’t recommend reading this after several glasses of wine, or whatever unless you reason better this way!! You will need to think, untangle story lines and understand this myriad cast of characters and convoluted but ultimately brilliantly written novel. The narrative also includes excerpts that I think are supposed to be from Theo’s book, which is based on Miriam’s real experience. I am not including these in the summary. In short, Miriam and her friend were abducted at age 15 while hitchhiking. The man took them to a house, and Miriam escaped but her friend was murdered. A young man is found murdered on his canal boat. Three women were among the last to see him - Laura, his one night stand, Miriam, his neighbor and Carla, his aunt. Each is an unreliable narrator and all seem to be hiding something. We actually hear from other narrators, this is a book with a lot of POVs. We also are given glimpses into small segments of a best selling mystery written by one of the characters. The police tell Laura that Daniel’s blood was found on her clothes. She says she bit him. They produce the murder weapon, a knife, and Laura says that it’s not hers. Also, she tells them Miriam could have planted it, since she took Laura’s key.

A Slow Fire Burning is a return to the twisty twisty murder myst'ry style that put hawkins on the map, with a large cast of unlikable, unreliable characters full of secrets and hidden agendas, carefully clipped clues and misdirection. there aren't any trains this time, but there are SEVERAL boats. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. 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? What would you be prepared to sacrifice? Paula Hawkins After being introduced to Ms. Hawkins with her psychological, twisty thriller “Girl on the train”, I was so drawn into her story about complex, broken, unreliable characters. I was expecting a big surprise, a major twist and I suppose it is here. 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 can’t say it was an explosive moment for me and that’s perhaps because there are many minor twists here and this one sort of melded in with the crowd. In retrospect it did explained things, it was the moment all should have become clear in my mind (as I’m sure it will in the minds of more switched-on readers).Overall, I am greatly looking forward to reading this book again. It has the complexity of The Great Gatsby - everything was set up perfectly and was surprising at the end. However, the greatness of this novel is not apparent in the first half of the book. I wasn’t entirely clear on the somewhat creepy relationship between Carla and Daniel. Was he just a really disturbed person who fantasized about his aunt, or did they really have a romantic relationship? The book started with me thinking about a particular character – a young woman called Laura, who suffers from a condition called disinhibition – but Laura was a character without a story. The challenge for me was finding the right story to tell. Once I had that, the writing process itself was very enjoyable (mostly).

Laura denies killing Daniel. The police find Daniel’s watch in Laura’s bathroom and take her to the police station for questioning. They mention that she was recently charged with stabbing another person with a fork. Laura has had issues since she was hit by a car at age ten. and left with a traumatic brain injury. Since then she has problems with memory, anger management and impulse control. One highlight is that the audio version I listened to was impeccably narrated by the brilliant actress Rosumund Pike. But in summary, I enjoyed this tale but I didn’t love it. It didn’t do for me what The Girl on the Trian did. I’ll be interested to see what others think of it: I expect some will absolutely love it though others might feel as I do, that it rather passed them by.Did Angela death was really an accident or was it murder? There are at least two instances where it’s mentioned the carpet on top of the stairs. One particularly where Carla is watching Daniel “fixing” the carpet which I find it odd. Pike makes deft work of these unreliable narrators who span several generations, imbuing their voices with a defensiveness and vulnerability born from past disappointments and trauma. Miriam is forever second-guessing the judgment of strangers who she knows see her as a lonely busybody, while Laura is chaotic and brittle-sounding, convinced that none of the calamities that befall her are ever her fault. In particular, Pike captures the melancholy of the widowed Irene, whose frail appearance and occasional mishaps prompt others to condescend and patronise rather than treat her as a sentient adult. This being a Hawkins novel, the plot twists are sprinkled liberally to keep listeners on their toes, though the story is sustained by the humanity of these expertly narrated characters whose secrets are slowly brought to the surface. it also features a mystery novelist character who gives a little meta-commentary on the genre as well as roadmap to the novel itself:

That knowledge, the sense of betrayal that came with it, that changed her. It left her marked. It left her angry." Mindset October 2019!? Can't she wrote instead of... You know... Eating or sleeping? Is that too much to ask? Jealousy and deceit are the catalyst for this powerful book. With a number of unlikeable characters that are complicated and deemed as troubling, it was hard to cheer for any of them. 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. Angela allows her bad habits to interfere with the love and care for her son... revealing a terrible cycle of child neglect. This was a well written story that was well plotted with a good constant pace. Almost all the characters were damaged but not very likeable and unfortunately I just didn’t engage with any of them. The lives of the women was the interesting part of the story but again it didn’t offer anything particularly new and exciting. I loved the authors other book I read ‘Girl on the train’ which was much more enjoyable. The character development was awesome! I truly felt like I got to know each of the characters. Irene was a badass. I hope I’m exactly like her when I’m 80 years old. 😂

How Long It Takes to Read

As if someone else wrote it, chapter 30 was my favourite one, where I asked why couldn’t have been like that throughout the book? It was a moment of great lucidity and that was what I was expecting from this author. I wasn’t impressed by the writing and I found the storyline and its structure to be pretentious and confusing.

The book revolves around the gruesome scene of Daniel's death occurring on a London houseboat he was living in. There are numerous characters seen leaving the crime scene reportedly by his nosey neighbor Miriam, who has a side story of her own tying the Twist and turns and complicating who did it. The author sets in motion a number of scenarios and vindictive reasons to commit the crime.

Standout Quote

When a devilishly handsome man is found brutally murdered on his houseboat, police wonder who could have committed something this gruesome. While trying to stitch together his complicated relationships, investigators are left with three women who just might've had the motive to kill. But which one has blood on her hands, and what led her to do it? As secrets swirl and lies unravel, the town tries to get to the bottom of the murder before it's too late. A chilling story that'll leave you with more questions than answers, A Slow Fire Burning gives the term "thriller" a whole new meaning. With unexpected characters, unforeseen consequences, and unusual connections, Hawkins's new book is a bloody masterpiece that's darker than it appears. Standout Quote A young man, Daniel Sutherland, has been found deceased on a houseboat. Leaving the scene of the crime is Laura, a young woman known to police. Fortunately for Daniel, there is a noisy neighbor Miriam who takes detailed records of all of the comings and goings. However, Daniel's mother, Angela, died just a few weeks before Daniel in an accident. Are these deaths connected? Was it Laura? What do we really know? Angela is Carla’s sister, living a lonely and unhappy life. She lived with her son Daniel until recent years when Daniel went to live on his own. They had a caustic, unhealthy relationship.