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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A tad too granular, perhaps, but Miriam’s introduction explains why she notices that the cabin doors of the neighboring houseboat are open on a cold morning and, hence, discovers the corpse.

Miriam is a middle aged woman, living just several boats down from the boat where Daniel is brutally murdered. 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. It's no surprise that you liked the book and/or movie version of The Girl on the Train, you're going to like A Slow Fire Burning.When Irene reads it, she's infuriated by "all the to-ing and fro-ing, all that jumping around in the timeline.

She discovered the body after all, has long-standing beef with Daniel’s family and stole a key piece of evidence from the crime scene. The highlight of these goings-on is Laura, a tiny but ferocious young woman who was seen running from Daniel's boat with blood on her mouth and clothes the last night he was alive. Irene eventually discovers drawings implying that Daniel and Carla may have had a sexual relationship and learns that Daniel taunted Theo with this information. I thought it was so interesting, the way you turned the whole thing around, you know, telling the story backward in some parts and forwards in others, letting us see inside the killer's head—that was so brilliant!

Irene is anxious to prove that Laura didn’t kill Daniel, which motivates her to suspect Daniel’s family members. 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. Moving between the perspectives of Straitley and Buckfast – “in his old black gown and his chalk-smudged suit, he looks like the last piece of dead skin left on a quickly healing wound” – she thinks of her new sparring partner. 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? Yet, a big YET, despite the book being character led, Hawkins uses the characterisations to create a beautifully weighted read.