A Slow Fire Burning

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The combination of intriguing mystery and fleshed out and equally intriguing characters was superbly executed and really elevated this rating for me.

This was this month’s book club pick, and I loved The Girl on the Train by the same author, which I read some time ago a couple of times, which is quite unusual for me, so I was really excited to get my hands on a copy, so much so that I bought myself a hardcover copy thinking I would love it. There’s Miriam from the neighbouring boat who “likes to keep an eye on things”; Laura, a hot-tempered young woman who slept with the victim shortly before his death; Carla, the dead man’s aunt, who is already mourning the death of her sister, Angela; and Irene, Angela’s elderly neighbour who is prone to confusion, but not so much that she doesn’t clock the goings-on next door. Daniel is Carol’s nephew, and they are grieving the loss of their three-year-old son, Ben, fifteen years ago. Dark and disturbing, this twisted story with its cast of damaged characters builds to a brilliant conclusion. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.In the bathroom, she dropped the watch into the sink, tore off the paper, dropped the towel on the floor. Early in the book, one of the women mentions how old books are slowly self-combusting, alluding to the deterioration that occurs inside paper. This is a well-written book, the words flow nicely, and the title was a great success, depicting the slow fire burning of anger, resentment, jealousy, hatred and deceit. To say I was not confused is an understatement, but I remember having that same feeling with her first one, but yet it reels you in at a tantalizing rate of emotions that you will revel in this when your finished. Angela’s sister, Carla, and Carla’s ex-husband, Theo, never recovered from the death of their three-year-old son Ben 15 years ago when he was in Angela’s care, and the two-one punch of these deaths is a painful reminder of Ben’s.

Angela’s neighbor, a senior citizen named Irene, found her; likewise, the marina’s resident busybody, Mariam, found Daniel. Some people come and go regularly; they have a patch, a stretch of the water they like to cover, so you get to know some of them. A Slow Fire Burning has a large cast, which I found easy to keep track of, with interlocking stories that they aren’t aware of themselves. We also are given glimpses into small segments of a best selling mystery written by one of the characters.The twists weren’t as action-packed as I was hoping they would be, but it still made for an enticing story.

I wasn’t impressed by the writing and I found the storyline and its structure to be pretentious and confusing. A narrowboat is not a comfortable environment for a tall man, and this was a very tall man, with a head like a cue ball and a perturbed expression, as though heÕd been expecting to do something else today, something fun, like taking his kids to the park, and now he was here with her, and he wasnÕt happy about it. Fortunately for Daniel, there is a noisy neighbor Miriam who takes detailed records of all of the comings and goings. A Slow Fire Burning is an atmospheric, suspenseful, psychotic thriller that will have you gripping the edge of your seat. The police are quite bamboozled and have to finally rely on an unexpected player to catch the killer.He glanced at the bookcase filled with paperbacks, at the dusty peace lily sitting on top of it, the framed photograph of a homely couple flanking their big-boned child. Afterward, her forearm wrapped ineffectually in reams of toilet paper, the rest of her wrapped in a threadbare towel, sitting on the ugly gray pleather sofa in her living room, Laura rang her mother.

The towpath was still, the roads up above quiet too, no sounds save for the throb of a generator, the squabble of moorhens ghosting gently past. Eyewitness by another houseboat resident, Miriam leads to a young girl Laura, who seemingly had a very disturbing past and childhood resulting in her unpredictable behavior. Wickedly dark and gorgeously written, this is a novel you'll be thinking about long after the last delicious pages. It’s a saying well-known to those recovering from destructive relationships, and it’s also the theme of the book.Succombing already to slow fire, the acidification of the paper destroying it from within, eating away at the pages, making them brittle and breakable. I wouldn't say I read an awful lot but I do know that if I had to pick a favourite author at the moment I would say Paula Hawkins. I did get through this quickly due to the short chapters, but it was a disappointing read for me overall.