A slow fire burning / Paula Hawkins.

“BLOOD-SODDEN, the girl staggers into the black. Her clothes are dishevelled, hanging off her young body, revealing expanses of pale flesh. Shoe lost, foot bleeding. She is in agony, but the pain has become inconsequential, eclipsed by other sufferings.

Her face is a mask of terror, her heart is a drum, her breath is the stricken pant of a fox gone to ground.

The night’s silence is broken by a low hum. A plane? Wiping blood from her eyes, the girl looks up at the sky and sees nothing but stars.

The hum is louder, lower. A car changing gear? Has she reached the main road? Her heart lifts, and from somewhere deep in her gut she summons the energy to run.

She feels rather than sees the light behind her. She feels her shape illuminated in the black and knows that the car is coming from behind her. It’s coming from the farm. She turns.

She knows, before she sees, that he has found her. She knows, before she sees, that it will be his face behind the wheel. She freezes. For a second she hesitates, and then she leaves the road, takes off running, into a ditch, over a wooden fence. She scrambles into the adjacent field and runs blind, falling, picking herself up, making no sound. What good would screaming do?

When he catches her, he takes handfuls of her hair, pulls her down. She can smell his breath. She knows what he is going to do to her. She knows what is coming because she has already seen him do it, she saw him do it to her friend, how savagely he—



‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Irene muttered out loud, snapping the book shut and slinging it on to the charity-shop pile. ‘What utter drivel.’ taken from the publisher site.

"When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women in particular"-- Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.