A Slow Fire Burning

A bit of a strange one this. The overall plot was simple; what complicated it was the continual messing around with the timeline and the dipping into the two different narratives of the past events which made it difficult at times to keep a line on who was still alive at the time of a particular perspective.
There were some lighter moments when the author seemed to poke fun directly at herself (character writes a novel with a disjointed narrative and worries if people might find this confusing – in a novel with a confusingly disjointed narrative). Mix with this some poorly written side characters (the spotty copper who is willing to spill the beans on the ongoing investigation to a man who clearly should have been a suspect), I can't help wondering if this could have been better if she had gone all out to write it as a comedy farce. Or perhaps she did and I just missed it..?