I hope you had a Happy Valentines Day! If you are still looking for a touch of slow-burn romance in your mystery reading, check out my recent blog Mysteries with just a hint of romance.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
It looks like I’m continuing with the “fire” theme with last week’s posts on From the Ashes and slow-burn romance! Today’s excerpt is from A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (author of The Girl on the Train. You might have heard about it.)
Hawkins introduces you to a number of widely varying characters in the wake of a murder of a young man on a longboat. Then she slowly starts to weave the connections between each of these characters, their relationships and their pasts. Even when the murderer confesses, you don’t yet know everything and are in for a few more plot twists before it all comes together.
Paula Hawkins is a master storyteller, writing complex character stories and carrying the reader through right from the first line. (Oh, a heads-up that she doesn’t skimp on the f-bomb. But no graphic sex or gore.)
“Seriously, could you take me off speaker? I don’t want to hear her voice; it makes me want to set fire to things.”
Paula Hawkins, A Slow Fire Burning
Years ago someone lit a match…
Laura has spent most of her life being judged. She’s seen as hot-tempered, troubled, a loner. Some even call her dangerous.
Miriam knows that just because Laura is witnessed leaving the scene of a horrific murder with blood on her clothes doesn’t mean Laura is a killer. Bitter experience has taught her how easy it is to get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Carla is reeling from the brutal murder of her nephew. She trusts no one and no thing: good people are capable of terrible deeds. But how far will she go to find peace?
Innocent or guilty, everyone is carrying damage. Some are damaged enough to kill.
Look what you started.
