After the fifth girl is found brutally murdered and burned in a London park, Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan must hurry to find the killer before he strikes again. The only problem is that there are subtle differences between the most recent murder and the previous deaths. Has the Burning Man struck again, or is there a copycat killer on the loose?
This novel was recommended to me after I finished reading one of Tana French’s novels; and on the surface, Jane Casey’s The Burning does share some similarities with French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. DC Kerrigan is Irish, though the novel is set in London not Dublin. We focus on Kerrigan’s relationships and struggles with her fellow police officers. The police are treated as fallable, unlike some books in the detective genre where the lead officer is basically an omniscient God.
However, that’s where the similarities end. One of the reasons why I am such a fan of Tana French’s novels is that it never feels like I am reading the script for an episode of Law and Order. With Casey’s novel, there was a strong “police procedural” vibe that got a little tedious in later chapters. Casey also made the strange decision to split her points-of-view between two female characters using first person narrative. It might be a personal pet peeve of mine, but I find it’s much easier to do split-POV from a third person perspective. I can only occupy headspace with one character at a time.
Overall, The Burning was a very “by the book” murder-mystery. It kept my attention throughout, but didn’t provide anything particularly exciting. If you like whodunnits, you’ll probably like this novel.
I have other things to say but there are spoilers so scroll down if you dare!
My rating: 2.5/5
You can find The Burning here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.
Happy reading everyone!
The ending of this book was bullshit. The Burning took its time building to a climax. We solved the mystery. We caught the killer. And then it all got thrown in the toilet with a nonsensical “suicide letter” wherein the murderer explains their dastardly plot in exquisite detail like a second-rate James Bond villain. It was such a cop-out. Either the police needed to gain a confession through interrogation, or actually I was kind of hoping that in the end they weren’t going to have enough evidence and the killer was going to walk free. That would have been at least passingly original. It was almost like Jane Casey couldn’t figure out what to do, had to meet a deadline, so she just tacked on this “Morgan Freeman showing up to explain the plot” ending. It completely ruined the novel for me.
One Year, One Hundred Books 