A Slow Fire Burning

“She’d wanted to punish him, but she’d also wanted to give herself an excuse to return, to see him again.”

This quotation refers to Laura’s motivation for taking Daniel’s watch when she left his boat. Even though Laura was hurt and angry by Daniel’s mistreatment of her, she was still attracted to him and craved his approval. The quotation reveals that Laura is not as tough as she appears on the outside and is actually quite vulnerable. Like most people, Laura secretly longs for love, acceptance, and connection.

“They had motive and they had opportunity and they had Laura, who they knew could be counted on, sooner or later, to say something really stupid.”

This quotation shows how a person with a disability can encounter many kinds of discrimination and explains why Laura is in a vulnerable position when the murder investigation begins. The police aren’t interested in details or nuance; they want to close the case as quickly as possible, and everything seems to point to Laura being the killer. Because Laura’s disabilities leave her with poor impulse control and low inhibitions, she is likely to incriminate herself, even though she isn’t guilty of the crime.

“The world going by could, in turn, watch her, fulfilling their expectations of the aged: sitting in a chair in a room, alone, musing on the past, on former glory, on missed opportunities, on the way things used to be. On dead people.”

This quotation plays with expectations and perceptions around Irene. People expect her to be passive and lost in her own world of memories. While Irene does spend a lot of time reminiscing, she remains shrewd and observant; as the plot unfolds, Irene’s observations become the key to the mystery being solved. The comment that Irene must spend most of her time musing on dead people is ironic because it refers both to her daydreams about her deceased husband but also her ability to solve the mystery of Daniel’s death.

“Accidents do happen, and they especially happen to drunks, but mother and son, eight weeks apart? In fiction, that would never stand.”

Irene has misgivings about whether there could be a connection between the deaths of Angela and Daniel. To Irene, someone who regularly reads crime fiction, it seems unlikely that their deaths are unrelated. This is a metafictional moment in the text, winking at the reader’s own desire to understand the relationship between the deaths. It also establishes the novel’s persistent interest in the relationship between parallel narratives—such as Theo’s novel, Miriam’s memoir, and Daniel’s notebook—and the plausibility of the events contained in them.

“A woman without a man or a child or a puppy to love, she’s cold, isn’t she? Cold and tragic, in some way dysfunctional.”

Carla says this to Theo as they discuss a character in his latest novel. Carla reflects on how women are perceived when they don’t conform to social expectations of being nurturing and oriented towards relationships. The quotation reveals the novel’s theme of exploring female experiences, especially the way marginalized women are treated and perceived.

“People could take advantage of someone like that, a small, powerless young thing like Laura, just as they had taken advantage of Miriam.”

Here, Miriam contemplates framing Carla for the murder by giving false information to the police. While Miriam is primarily motivated by her desire to hurt Theo, she also wants to protect Laura, whom she thinks might have killed Daniel. The quotation shows that Miriam feels an affinity with Laura and sees the two of them as both being exploited and victimized by more powerful people around them.

“The way you turned the whole thing around […] telling the story backward in some parts and forward in others, letting us see inside the killer’s head […] I loved the way you turned everything on its head, playing with our sympathies and empathies.”

The policeman’s praise of The One Who Got Away refers to structural features also present in A Slow Fire Burning that are part of Hawkins’s signature style. This quotation thus functions as a metafictional moment, revealing some of the features that can make crime fiction complex and engaging but also morally ambiguous.

“Theo had carefully hidden his identity, using a woman’s name for his pseudonym (Women love crime! his agent told him. They enjoy the catharsis of victimhood).”

This quotation is a sardonic commentary on the relationship between women and crime fiction. In recent years, especially with the rise of domestic noir, many of the most successful crime novels have been both written and read by women. Hawkins recognizes this trend but also critiques the assumption that women enjoy depictions of victimhood. Hawkins subverts this expectation in her own novel when she shows Carla and Miriam killing men in violent acts of revenge.

“The fork, the fork, the fork! The fork is a red herring! […] Perhaps the fork was a herring fork?”

This quotation occurs as Laura tries to resolve a lingering assault charge, in which she stabbed a man with a cocktail fork after he groped her. The quotation reveals the dark comedy of Laura having to deal with this minor and even silly charge while she confronts the much more serious charge of murder. Laura’s stream of consciousness reveals her ridiculing the police’s fixation on the fork stabbing and their belief that proves she is capable of murder. The term “red herring” refers to a clue that misleads or misdirects an investigation, and Laura is frustrated that no one will believe her claims that the fork incident is irrelevant to Daniel’s death.

“It leaves you with pain and scars and all sorts of impairments […], but the other stuff’s worse. The emotional stuff is worse, the mental stuff.”

The quotation represents a rare moment of vulnerability for Laura as she talks openly about how the car accident has affected her. The quotation also shows that most of Laura’s problems aren’t a result of her physical disabilities but rather because of the stigma and alienation she faces.

“You up here in your shabby tower, me down there on the water, we may not live in elegant homes, we might not have expensive haircuts and foreign holidays and good art on the walls, but that doesn’t make us nothing.”

Miriam thinks this as she reflects on why she believes that she and Laura are similar. She contrasts Laura and herself with wealthier and more powerful people, such as Theo and Carla. Miriam shows that she fixates on what she doesn’t have and is obsessed with reclaiming some sort of power.

“This woman was damaged, this woman was a victim, this woman was fucking crazy.”

Laura thinks this after she finds her bloodstained keys hidden in Miriam’s home. She is shocked to realize that Miriam must have stolen the keys from the crime scene and wonders if Miriam may have killed Daniel. Laura’s thoughts show that Miriam’s eccentric schemes alienate her from others; Miriam thinks her plan will bring her and Laura closer, but it only drives Laura away.

“Experimentation for its own sake, who did that serve? What was wrong with the traditional crime novel, after all, with good prevailing, evil vanquished? So what if things rarely turned out like that in real life?”

Irene thinks about why she did not enjoy reading Theo’s crime novel: She does not like his stylistic experimentation, but she is more opposed to the lack of a clear moral resolution. In another moment of metafiction, Irene articulates a point of view that is shared by many readers of crime fiction and that might even be considered a critique of Hawkins’s fiction. The quotation itself answers Irene’s question: Irene longs for clear black and white morality, but life is almost always more complicated and ambiguous.

“What did it mean that instead of making himself the hero of his own story, he had made himself the villain? It cut her to the bone.”

Carla thinks this as she looks through Daniel’s sketchbook before she comes to the images depicting the incidents around Ben’s death. At first, Carla is sympathetic to Daniel and sorry to see his self-loathing represented on the page. This sympathy sets the stage for a reversal: Carla will experience a complete change of perspective when she realizes that Daniel may have killed her son.

“When the police come, the girl will tell them how she fought for her life and they will believe her.”

This quotation occurs in an excerpt from Theo’s novel; in this climactic scene, the girl beats the killer to death and then claims the killing was in self-defense. The quotation is ambiguous as it is not clear if Theo is celebrating or criticizing the girl’s ability to get away with her crime. Either way, the quotation is another example of how scenarios are not always what they appear to be, and there is always more to the story.

“Miriam was tested and found wanting; she discovered at that time that she lacked some essential goodness, some critical strand of moral fibre.”

This quotation shows how Miriam has been haunted by guilt and self-loathing ever since Lorraine’s murder. Miriam acted with courage to save her own life, but the killer’s manipulation pitted the friends against one another: The more Lorraine suffered, the more of a chance that Miriam had to escape. It is not Miriam’s fault that she was placed in this terrible situation, but it permanently alters her self-perception. Miriam’s belief that she is no longer a good person primes her to eventually get revenge by killing Lorraine’s murderer.

“Suspense is the agonizing thing, isn’t it? Hitchcock knew that. Now the suspense was over, now he knew what was going to happen, he felt shocked and sad, but he also felt relieved.”

This quotation occurs as Theo muses on how he feels after making a false confession that he killed Daniel. Theo feels better even though he is facing life in prison because he is no longer in suspense about the outcome. Alfred Hitchcock was a famous film director who often explored the psychological aspects of murder and crime in his films. The allusion reveals Hawkins’s positioning herself as part of a legacy of artists who use suspense and psychology to create a thrilling experience for readers and viewers.

“Norman Mailer stabbed his wife with a penknife and William Burroughs fatally shot his, but times were different now, weren’t they? Times had changed; people were so intolerant, you couldn’t get away with that sort of thing any longer. One step out of line and you were canceled.”

Theo thinks with regret about what will happen to his reputation when the story leaks that he murdered his nephew. He somewhat arrogantly compares himself to two famous writers and contemplates how these authors lived in times when men, especially successful and famous men, could literally get away with murder. Rather than seeing changes in social norms as progressive, Theo is embittered that he could get “cancelled” for being seen as a murderer. The quotation shows how arrogant and entitled he is for not expecting to suffer for his choice to identify himself as the murderer.

“She’d known from the first moment she saw that drawing, of Daniel on the balcony, smiling down at her child, exactly what she was going to do to him. Everything else, all the rest, was a lie.”

This quotation occurs as Carla thinks back to the events on the day that she killed Daniel. At first, Carla claims that she wasn’t intending to hurt or even confront Daniel, but here, she admits the murder was inevitable and even premeditated. Others may not have resorted to such violent revenge, especially without further investigation, but Carla is so fixated on her grief that murder becomes the only logical response for her after the revelation that Ben could have killed her son.

“Somehow, despite everything, in her darkest moments Laura still wanted her mum.”

Laura is excited when she briefly thinks that her mother may have come to visit her in prison. The quotation provides a new insight into Laura’s character because though she often presents herself as tough, Laura is still vulnerable and longs to be nurtured and made to feel safe.

“Do you honestly think that because you lost your son in that terrible, tragic way, that gives you the right?”

Irene marvels at Carla’s attempts to justify both her crime and the subsequent cover-up. She is sympathetic to Carla’s loss but is outraged that Carla killed the son of her closest friend and threatened to ruin Laura, whom Irene loves like a daughter. In this confrontation, Irene’s protective instincts towards Daniel and Laura compete with Carla’s maternal desire to avenge her son’s death.

“What it always came down to. You couldn’t understand, you’re not a mother […] you don’t have it inside you, whatever it is, the capacity for limitless, unconditional love. The capacity for unbounded hatred, either.”

Carla maintains that she was justified in killing Daniel and accuses Irene of not understanding because she does not have children of her own. Ironically, Irene is capable of more sympathy for Daniel because she is not blinded by loss; Carla’s identity as a mother makes her only capable of caring about her own child and not anyone else’s.

“It was […] lucky that Carla saw her as waiting for death, not quite of this world, not up to speed with […] its technological developments” (288).

The quotation shows how Irene subverts expectations and uses negative stereotypes to her advantage: Because she is an elderly woman, no one thinks she is very clever or observant. Irene not only solves the murder mystery, but she also cleverly entraps Carla using technology that is considered beyond the grasp of older people.