Radiant Heat by Sarah-Jane Collins

Publisher's Synopsis

When a catastrophic wildfire suddenly rips through a woman’s hometown, she thinks she is lucky to have survived . . . until she finds a dead woman in her driveway, clutching a piece of paper with her name on it. . . .

The blaze came out of nowhere one summer afternoon, a wall of fire fed by blustering wind. Yet, somehow, Alison is alive. She rode out the fire on the damp tiles of her bathroom, her entire body swaddled in a wet woolen blanket. As flames crackled around her, the bitter char of eucalyptus settled in the back of her throat, each breath more desperate than the last.

The wildfire that devastated the Victoria countryside Alison calls home sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to obliterate the carefully constructed life she is living. When Alison emerges from her sheltering place, she spots a soot-covered cherry red car in her driveway, and in it, a dead woman. Alison has never met Simone Arnold in her life . . . or so she thinks. So what is she doing here?

As Alison searches for answers across Australia’s scorched bushlands, she soon learns that the fire isn’t the only threat she’s facing. . . .

Critical Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

Tonally inconsistent and difficult to follow due to flashbacks, this thriller sets up too many subplots to be entirely engaging. Alison is self-destructive and brash, and her attempts to grapple with the aftermath of the fire and her own troubled past become tangled in such a way as to distract from the book’s central mystery. Read Full Review

Publisher's Weekly

Collins delivers a clever, unsettling debut about the mysterious connection between two apparent strangers. Australian artist Alison King has barely survived a brushfire that devastated her small town of Lake Bend. After covering herself in a bathwater-soaked blanket while the flames ravaged her home, she’s emerged safely, only to find a soot-covered car near the ruins of her house that contains a strange woman’s corpse. Read Full Review

Reviews From Elsewhere

Amazon

An all too familiar horror of an Australian summer, Radiant Heat (2024) by Sarah-Jane Collins forms the premise of this mystery thriller. Alison King survives a bushfire ragging through Lake Bend, Victoria. Upon fleeing her smoke-inundated home, Alison discovers a burnout car with a dead woman inside. Not knowing the woman, nor why she was seeking her out, Alison decides to travel back to the Gold Coast to unravel the mystery. Read All Reviews

GoodReads

This book was uncomfortable to read at times, but it is also the kind of book that makes you keep thinking about it. The main character was difficult to watch but hard to turn away from like a train wreck. I didn’t like Alison much at all, but her story was interesting. I didn’t find it to be as much of a thriller as I thought it would be based on the blurb, but it was still very interesting. Read All Reviews

Lesa's Book Critiques

I wanted to like Sarah-Jane Collins’ debut novel, Radiant Heat, so much more than I did. The description of a woman who survives an Australian bush fire only to find that she’s still in danger sounded appealing. However, I had a hard time liking Alison King, the protagonist. Read Full Review

Tessa Talks Books

Radiant Heat by Sarah-Jane Collins began with a raging wildfire in the Victoria area of Australia. Allison survives the fire but finds a young woman who isn’t so lucky in a car parked in her driveway. The fire creates a claustrophobic atmosphere throughout the story, setting the perfect stage for the mystery.  Read Full Review