Emily Joyce is in trouble. Her second novel hasn’t been written and the publishers are demanding the return of her advance, a significant amount of money that she no longer has. But they have a way out…

Jack Smyth, a world-class cyclist, has always been suspected of killing his wife and trying to cover it up by burning their house down. Everyone has their own opinion of his guilt or innocence, but now he wants to tell his story. All he needs is a ghost-writer…

Emily finds herself in Florida with Jack and the writing experience begins. But soon Emily, who has secrets of her own, begins to suspect that not everything she is being told is true. But who is truly controlling the narrative?

This is the eighth thriller from Catherine Ryan Howard and I’ve had the privilege of being able to follow her career from the start with the excellent Distress Signals. This book isn’t the first time she has dabbled in the world of the writer – the excellent The Nothing Man had a similar idea, but this is a very different book.

I’ll be honest – that’s the idea of reviews after all – this took a while to get going for me. The tension is on a low boil for most of the book and a number of the reveals didn’t catch me out like some of… no, most of Catherine’s books have.

Emily is a strong central character and while the surprises weren’t that surprising, her story – and Jack’s – is still a good read. I suppose the problem here is that I’m inevitably comparing it to the writer’s other books, like the excellent Run Time, and this is “just” a perfectly good thriller (if a tad slow in places).

Burn After Reading is out now in hardback and ebook. Many thanks for the review copy.