Book Review – The Burning Soul

by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton) ISBN 978-340-99354-5

After Haight and Lonny have done their time, Haight moves far away to Pastor’s Bay in Maine where he hoped no-one would ever find out his secret past.

Haight remembers how he had wanted to let her go but Lonny was the one who took it too far, closing her nostrils so she couldn’t breathe. Lonny and Haight were tried as adults and spent years in separate facilities, from juvenile to adult. The judge ordered that all records of the trial should be sealed.

Now someone attacks Haight about his past. He asks the police to intervene but keep the matter private. Haight is a private man, a man of figures, an accountant who lives a solitary life, except for his customers who were happy with his work. Pastor’s Bay seemed to be as far away as he could get from his past.

But her ghost begins to haunt him, and then another little girl who was missing, played and sang in his basement. She seems quite happy there.

There is a shocking twist to this story, one you’d never believe could happen. The police come up with a solution in the end, in the woods, in an old caravan.  What happens to Lonny and Haight who did the worst thing they could ever have done?

Dee Andrew