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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Laura Kilbride – had a traumatic brain injury as a child and was with the victim the night he died. When Theo went to talk to Angela about Daniel, she showed him a sketch Daniel had done of Carla, naked. They argued, with Theo telling her that she was responsible for his son’s death and her own son becoming a sociopath.

Irene brings one of Daniel’s notebooks to show Carla. It’s the graphic novel. Theo throws it in the fire. Carla recalls that the year before Angela died, Daniel turned up on her doorstep, upset. She let him stay the night but awoke to find him sketching her naked. Then after Angela’s death, she found some letters written by Angela to Daniel’s father, saying how much she hated Daniel.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 heartfelt memoir about race, identity and mental illness. Read by the actor himself, it makes for moving listening.

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. 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 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.

Yes. 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! 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.