Local Gone Missing by Fiona Barton
Psychological Thrillers, 383 pages
Published June 14, 2022 by Berkley
Elise King is a successful and ambitious detective - or she was, before medical leave left her unsure if she'd ever return to work. She now spends most days watching the growing tensions in her small seaside town of Ebbing: the weekenders in their fancy clothes, renovating old bungalows into luxury homes, and the locals resentful of the changes.
Elise can only guess what really happens behind closed doors. But Dee Eastwood, her cleaner, often knows. She's an invisible presence in many of the houses in town but she sees and hears everything.
The conflicts in town boil over when a newcomer wants to put Ebbing on the map with a giant music festival, and a teenage girl ends up dead because of drugs. When a man also disappears the first night of the festival, Elise is drawn back into her detective work and starts digging for answers. Ebbing is a small town, but it's full of myriad secrets and hidden connections that run deeper and darker than Elise could have ever imagined.
My thoughts about Local Gone Missing ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)
First line—"There was something buzzing. A fly. Unable to move, he could only listen to its whining drone and try to follow it round the small room in his head. Where was it? Near the sinks? The drain in the floor?"
This is the third book of Fiona Barton's that I have read and reviewed. I guess that makes her one of my must-read authors. And honestly, in my opinion, each book is better than the last one.
This story grabbed me from the very first chapter. How can a person being held captive not be an intriguing way to start? And then all the secrets kept by everyone in town. Who are the good guys and who isn't? It was hard to keep track of who was doing what and why—but in a totally good way. That's what makes this story so great, all the questions, and so many sneaky characters.
Local Gone Missing is a book that you will not want to put down once you start. I just had to keep going so I could get to the bottom of everyone's motives. What a great read!
Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for a copy of Local Gone Missing. This is my honest opinion of the book.
About the author
My career has taken some surprising twists and turns over the years. I have been a journalist - senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at The Mail on Sunday, where I won Reporter of the Year at the National Press Awards, gave up my job to volunteer in Sri Lanka and since 2008, have trained and worked with exiled and threatened journalists all over the world.
But through it all, a story was cooking in my head.
The worm of this book infected me long ago when, as a national newspaper journalist covering notorious crimes and trials, I found myself wondering what the wives of those accused really knew – or allowed themselves to know.
It took the liberation of my career change to turn that fascination into a tale of a missing child, narrated by the wife of the man suspected of the crime, the detective leading the hunt, the journalist covering the case and the mother of the victim.
Much to my astonishment and delight, The Widow is available now in the UK, and around the world in the coming months.
However, the sudden silence of my characters feels like a reproach and I am currently working on a second book.
My husband and I are living the good life in south-west France, where I am writing in bed, early in the morning when the only distraction is our cockerel, Sparky, crowing. ~ Goodreads
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