REVIEW: CONSUMING FIRE by Catherine Fearns

 


 

Consuming Fire

'What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen...

Liverpool is in the grip of an intense heatwave, and strange things are happening. 

A woman dies in an apparent case of Spontaneous Human Combustion; a truck explodes on the dock road; the charred corpses of pets litter the city; forest fires ravage the pinewoods... and there are birds everywhere, silent flocks drawing in ominously. 

Detective Inspector Darren Swift thinks there are connections, and his investigation delves into the worlds of football, nightclubs and organised crime. But is he imagining things?

Dr. Helen Hope doesn’t think so. And she believes the key lies in a mysterious seventeenth-century occult book which has gone missing from Liverpool Library. 

In the blistering sequel to Reprobation, DI Swift is forced to confront some inconvenient ghosts from his past as a terrifying shadow lies over his city's reality...'

My Review:

Where Volume 1 of this excellent series was concerned with genetic manipulation, police procedure and Calvinist faith, Volume 2 is concerned with fire and brimstone, criminality and (bizarrely but rightfully) football-related celebrity. You might think this is a genre blend too far but be reassured, it all comes together delightfully, playing against audience expectations and setting up the world-unto-itself of Liverpool for the finale in Volume 3. 

The characters that I loved to from Reprobation (Swift and Helen) are thankfully still here, plus others who might be one thing on the surface but are quite another underneath, hiding in plain sight as it were. Threaded through the story are the the prophecies of a fire demon whose edicts and outrages are skillfully interwoven with present-day happenings, that are themselves the stuff of tabloid sentationalism. The author keeps up a cracking pace and never once gives the impression that the world she creates is in any way too outlandish to be possible. Belief does strange things to people...

Buy it here.

Author Bio:

Catherine Fearns is a writer from Liverpool. Her novels Reprobation (2018) and Consuming Fire (2019) are published by Crooked Cat and are both Amazon bestsellers. As a music journalist Catherine has written for Pure Grain Audio, Broken and Noisey. Her short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Toasted Cheese, Succubus, Here Comes Everyone, Offshoots and Metal Music Studies. She lives in Geneva with her husband and four children, and when she’s not writing or parenting, she plays guitar in a heavy metal band.

Social media links:

@metalmamawrites

catherinefearns.com


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