A SLOW FIRE BURNING

by Paula Hawkins

Paula Hawkins’ latest psychological thriller A Slow Fire Burning rises to the amazing, disturbing, yet wonderful heights of her breakthrough novel, The Girl on the Train. In A Slow Fire Burning, Hawkins has developed three memorable main characters, all women who are deeply troubled by the tragedies they’ve experienced in their lives. Laura, who can’t seem to get her life on track after an extremely abusive childhood; Carla, whose three-year-old son died while her sister was babysitting him; and Miriam, a quirky, off-putting individual with a secret from her adolescence that has left her emotionally crippled.

When Daniel Sutherland is found brutally murdered on his houseboat, Hawkins carefully lays out the stories about his connections to each of these women. Although the reader’s heart breaks for the women, Hawkins constructs a complex web between each of them and Sutherland and successfully creates suspicion about which one committed the murder. As the story unfolds, we see Laura relentlessly targeted by the police for even the smallest crimes. Carla, who has worked relentlessly to forgive her sister, has been deeply scarred by her only child’s death and acts erratically. And Miriam, who in an attempt to work out the trauma of her adolescence, writes a memoir and asks Carla’s author-husband to read it, believes he steals her book idea and publishes her story as his own.

In A Slow Fire Burning, Hawkins does such a great job of developing each of her characters that the reader feels real sympathy towards them. She also plants many seeds of doubt about their possible motives for murder. Read this book. You won’t want to put it down until the final page. (Liz)