The Burning

By: Jane Casey

Narrated by: Sarah Coomes

Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

The Burning Man. It’s the name the media has given a brutal murderer who has beaten four young women to death before setting their bodies ablaze in secluded areas of London’s parks. And now there’s a fifth.

Maeve Kerrigan is an ambitious detective constable, keen to make her mark on the murder task force. Her male colleagues believe Maeve’s empathy clouds her judgment, but the more she learns about the latest victim, Rebecca Haworth, from her grieving friends and family, the more determined Maeve becomes to bring her murderer to justice. But how do you catch a killer no one has seen when so much of the evidence has gone up in smoke?

Maeve’s frenetic hunt for a killer in The Burning, Jane Casey’s series debut, is a gripping introduction to one of the most engaging crime fiction characters in recent memory.

©2011 Jane Casey (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Better than I expected! Close to a 5 🌟

After reading some of the less flattering reviews I wasn't sure what I would get- but it was much better than the reviews led me to expect. I thought Maeve was a great new character and I've already purchased the next book in the series. some people criticized the narrator and that baffles me as well - I thought the narrator did a great job and I had no trouble following different characters. Though I'm often not a fan of switching points of view in this book I thought it worked well. I'm tempted to give it 5 stars just to raise the overall average. if there was something in between 4 and 5 star rating that's where I would put it. Couldn't stop listening. A great find in my opinion!

39 of 40 people found this review helpful

Glad I listened to this one last

I'm really glad that I listened to this book in the Maeve Kerrigan series last because had I listened to it first, I don't think I would have listened to the other books in this series, which are VERY good.

I found Louise to be very annoying in this book and the last hour of the book which is mostly a letter from Louise simply needed to finish!

I don't think this book is critical to Maeve Kerrigan series if you are interested in reading or listening to these books. All of the other books in the series are much better and maybe that is because of the interaction of Josh Derwent. He's a bugger and I love him! He adds to the story.

25 of 27 people found this review helpful

What is Better than Book 1 in a Series You Like ??

Jane Casey has done something difficult. . .successfully created a character who follows in the footsteps of Jane Tennison (Prime Suspect) and Anna Travis while establishing her own identity. The plots are clever, the dialogue smart and the narration superb. If you enjoy British police procedurals this is a wonderful series !

21 of 23 people found this review helpful

Engrossing: well-written and well-read

I really enjoyed this book; it was predictable in terms of the culprit, but the structure of the book with changing narrators worked well in creating a suspenseful denouement and strong character creation. The narrator is excellent. Can't wait for the next in the series!

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Disappointing

What aspect of Sarah Coomes’s performance would you have changed?

It must really be a challenge to distinguish so many English accents as well as the different ages and characters of everyone in this book. Coombes makes a brave job of it, but some character's voices sound cartoonish, sometimes it's hard to tell who's speaking in a conversation where both voices sound quite similar. There are also times when the character is thinking the words, but it's hard to understand that except in retrospect.

Did The Burning inspire you to do anything?

This is a ridiculous question.

Any additional comments?

There are some interesting characters and events, and I did listen all the way through. The romantic relationships are incompletely drawn. A couple of characters (no spoilers here- don't worry) do not seem consistent--their personalities seem to shift to fit the needs of the plot. I was disappointed in the book as a whole. To me, it seems that the murderer is transparently easy to guess very early on. The last hour or so is eye-rollingly trite and tedious. The combination of an over-long letter and some supposed newspaper accounts try to do what should have been accomplished in the main part of the book.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Predictable Plot, Annoying Narrator

This is not one of the better detective stories I have listened to recently. The plot is fairly predictable, nothing very interesting. It's a standard whodunnit. I do not like the deliberately misleading introduction of Louise (if you listen to/read it, you'll understand what I mean). It's immature and lacks imagination on the writer's part. There is nothing here that makes me want to continue listening if this should become a series.

What I enjoyed least about this book is the narrator. The chair she is sitting in often creaks noticeably in the background. She has a bad habit of sucking in air between her teeth. Sometimes it could be appropriate to the dialogue, but at other times it's just annoying. Her portrayal of male characters is very distracting as her voice becomes extremely harsh-sounding and nasal. Right around the beginning of the second half it is obvious that she has a rather bad head cold and at times her voice becomes so scratchy that it I found myself actually clearing MY throat! I wanted to yell at her to take a drink of water! When this happens, I don't understand why they don't just stop recording and wait a few days for the reader to get better instead of pushing them until they are hoarse. Things like this are distracting to me and really detract from the listening experience. A narrator should be unobtrusive, in my opinion.

I wish I had saved the credit, but it isn't the worst I've listened to. It's just....meh. Save your credit unless you're desperate for Britcrime and have listened to everything else.

29 of 33 people found this review helpful

Thorough story- full of mystery

I really liked this book & the way the author presented the plot. it was chucked full of psychological suspense & it kept my interest throughout. it had plenty of winding police involvement & i liked the way the characters were kept straight in the presentation in this book. Now on to the next Casey book. Satisfied reader

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

I look forward to more

This was a surprise. It was better than I expected but left a bit to be desired. The denouement(s) were predictable and rushed, in my opinion. On the other hand, I liked Maeve. I can see her developing in her job. I wonder, though, why she almost always went alone when interviewing people.

The narration was acceptable. I look forward to reading/listening to more.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Good story, nice beach read.

A good solid listen even if you figured it out in the first 2 chapters. Excellent narration for an enjoyable story.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

First in the Maeve Kerrigan series.

This is Casey’s debut novel involving Maeve Kerrigan, a bright and ambitious detective on the murder squad. She is willing to give all she has to the job, to bring murderers to justice. This puts her in conflict with her boy friend, Ian, and her parents, all of whom don’t want her to be a policewoman at all and think it’s too dangerous for her. She also has to fight against her male counterparts who make cracks about her being a woman, and who feel that her “compassion” gets in the way of her judgment. At present they are tracking down a serial killer, dubbed “the burning man” by the press because he has killed four women, savaged their looks unbelievably so as to disguise who they are, and then set them on fire. There is a fifth victim, who fits some, but not all of the MO of the burning man. Maeve doesn’t think it’s the same killer but a copycat killer, and she sets out to find the murderer while working also on the serial killer case. In some ways this was a compelling book. The character of Maeve reminds me of Paddy Sheehan, Denise Mina’s character, fighting for respect from her family and from her male colleagues. The use of alternating viewpoints in this novel didn’t work for me. The narrator did very well with all the characters, portraying them. But with the alternating voices, particularly if the character now speaking isn’t named, which happened a couple of times, even the best of narrators couldn’t have avoided some confusion for the reader. Having said this, I liked Maeve as a character and am willing to read more books in this series.

17 of 23 people found this review helpful