Out now in paperback
A SLOW FIRE BURNING by Paula Hawkins
(Penguin £8.99, 384pp) PEOPLE who look at Miriam see a dowdy, middle-aged woman who l i ves on a London narrowboat. But on a cold spring day, Miriam witnesses an appalling event: a man has been murdered on a neighbouring houseboat, and Miriam might hold the clue to his killer. While the police are quick to suspect Laura, a troubled girl who was seen fleeing the houseboat covered in blood, a web of secrets begins to unravel.
Was the sudden death of the dead man’s alcoholic mother, a few weeks before his murder, really a coincidence? Why does Miriam detest Theo, a successful crime novelist who is the estranged husband of the victim’s coolly selfpossessed aunt, Carla?
The latest psychological thriller by Paula Hawkins is a gripping tale of damage and betrayal, with a shocking final twist.
MY UNAPOLOGETIC DIARIES
by Joan Collins
(W&N £9.99, 373pp) ‘KEEP a diary,’ the movie star Mae West is supposed to h av e remarked, ‘and one day it will keep you.’ It is advice that Joan Collins has taken to heart in her diaries, which begin in 1989 when she filmed her final scenes as the wicked Alexis Colby in Dynasty. She dreamed of a future in the theatre: ‘No more tacky dialogue… Noel Coward here I come!’ But plenty more tacky dialogue awaits, not least in a nightmare touring production of a play in which Joan costars with her old Dynasty adversary, Linda Evans.
The pages drip with celebrities, some charming — Valentino, Elton John — some (Muck Flick, Harvey Weinstein) boorish. Joan grapples with ‘the fate of over-50s actresses’, so when she finds happiness with her husband, Percy Gibson, you feel like cheering. The Dame is a trouper!
THEROUX THE KEYHOLE by Louis Theroux
(Pan £9.99, 400pp)
WHEN lockdown began in March 2020, Louis Theroux had just set up a production company with his wife, Nancy. Before the pandemic, he worried about the strain that sharing their professional and personal lives might put on their relationship, but Covid would test the Theroux family’s resilience to its limits.
Having spent his career travelling to explore the outer limits of human weirdness, Louis now found himself studying extreme behaviour in his own home.
He treated the anxiety caused by working from home, while trying to keep the peace between his three lively sons, by drinking ever larger quantities of bourbon, and developed a bromance with the nation’s favourite PE teacher, Joe Wicks.
His diary records in rueful detail the battleground that was his lockdown life. But as normal life resumed, he realised ‘that what really underlies all that stress and bickering is love’.