A Slow Fire Burning
By Paula Hawkins
Published year: 2021
Published: Penguin Books
Page count : 358 pages
Medium : Paperback
Genre : Mystery,Suspense, Thriller, Drama, Fiction, 2023-read.
Rating : 3/5 ⭐⭐⭐
Paula Hawkins makes for a very good story teller. The writing and prose are very engaging and gripping throughout. At the outset, this is a murder investigation but also has lot of other plot lines and drama going on. A young man is found murdered in his boat house and five characters acquainted with him are intricately drawn into the investigation. They have their grievances with each other. Some are trying to throw a protective rope to another, some are trying to falsely frame another, some are just slinking away from it all because they can't deal with it. But on the whole, there is no escape from their haunted thoughts.
I felt major disappointment at how easily this crime got solved. I mean after leafing through 300 pages, a couple of pages and an amateur old woman is all it takes to solve this crime mystery. It felt like an anti climax. :/
Some of the characters are very well crafted - like Laura, Clara and Irene while others like Miriam and Theo don't have a focused importance which makes them feel a bit superficial to the story. I thought Paula tried to integrate multiple aspects to the murder investigation but couldn't really maneuver them well. For the most part, the story didn't feel like a murder investigation - which is both good and bad for a drama lover like me. But towards the end, when she tried to make one of the leads to the murder investigation look like commited by a serial killer who amazingly had some age old connection to Miriam and who also happens to be wheelchair bound, I thought my sanity was being tested!!
I am glad to close this but Paula Hawkins writes some amazingly, sweeping prose that doesn't let the reader go. I will check out her other books too. I was a fan of her global bestseller 'The Girl on The Train' when I last read it. :)
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