#BlogTour ‘Local Gone Missing’ by Fiona Barton

About the book…

‘I absolutely loved this smart, twisty novel’ Shari Lapena

‘A dark and twisty read’ Nita Prose, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Maid

THE TENSE AND COMPELLING NEW NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WIDOW AND THE CHILD.

Everyone watches their neighbours.

Elise King moves into the sleepy seaside town of Ebbing. Illness has thrown her career as a successful detective into doubt, but no matter how hard she tries to relax and recuperate, she knows that something isn’t right.

Everyone lies about their friends.

Tensions are running high beneath the surface of this idyllic community: the weekenders in their fancy clothes, renovating old bungalows into luxury homes, and the locals resentful of the changes. A town divided, with the threat of violence only a heartbeat away.

Everyone knows a secret.

This peaceful world is shattered when two teenagers end up in hospital and a local man vanishes without trace. Elise starts digging for answers, but the community closes ranks, and the truth begins to slip through her fingers. Because in a small town like this, the locals are good at keeping secrets…

Everyone’s a suspect when a local goes missing.

‘Tense and full of reveals and twists. This compulsively dark mystery is a joy to read. Fiona Barton never disappoints!’ Lesley Kara

‘I was completely swept up in this story of a seaside town full of dark secrets – the pace was perfect, the characters so skilfully drawn and the ending was masterful,’Katherine Faulkner, author of ‘Greenwich Park

Many thanks to Random Things Tours for the blogtour invite and Bantam Press for my gifted review copy of ‘Local Gone Missing’ which is out in hardcover and e-book format from June 2022.

Apologies for being late with my review, I thoroughly enjoyed this book which takes a trauma infused murder mystery, and views it through the lens of countryside gentrification.

What you have are small towns, and villages, overtaken by rich ‘immigrants’ on the weekends, who invade the local communities, bring their outsourced builders, contractors and so forth, wreck the local economy and go back home again on Monday.

In an environment like this, beyond the pebble sculptures and lighthouse shaped light pulls, there is  seething resentment in the seaside town of Ebbing which erupts when newcomer, Phil Diamond, decides to through a festival in the grounds of the mansion he has bought.

Facing stiff opposition from locals, especially Dave, the publican whose place is the community heart, over concerns that drugs and even more out of towners will swamp their home, their worst fears come true when 2 teens overdose(Dave’s son being one of them) and a businessman goes missing.

Living a Alan Partridge-esque existence in a caravan on the grounds of the wrecked building which he has purchased to appease his ‘trophy wife’, the grotesque Pauline, Charlie Perry has more to worry about than just not being able to sexually satisfy his second wife. Brutally tortured in a home invasion , his daughter from his first marriage is safely ensconced within a luxury care home, brain damaged and blind, perpetually known as ‘darling girl‘ even though she is approaching 40.

But with spiralling construction costs, care home fees, a profligate wife and debtors to satisfy, is anyone really that surprised when he goes missing?

Will the finger of suspicion point towards someone close to home, or someone from further afield, maybe someone from Charlie’s past?

And what part will invisible cleaner Dee, the woman who does, have to play in the whole affair?

She is both local and not, cleaning for the home grown and the from away alike, desperately trying to bring in the money which keeps her family going. But often, those who clean up the messes that others leave behind, notice the things that others would overlook…

Into this missing person case steps Elise King, who has moved to Ebbing after splitting with her husband and is recovering from breast cancer as a single woman. Ably supported by the superb Ronnie, her next door neighbour who is in charge of morale boosting, she has a house which opens, literally, onto Ebbing high street. She sits in her window and sees, using her police training to note what others would not.

Dee and Elise find the threads of the mystery pulling them inexorably into the investigation, whether they want to or not, bound by discovery and also the moral imperative to search for the truth.

Dee, for the traumatised child that she once was, and the parent she now is, wanting to protect and keep safe her young son Calum.

Elise, trying to re-establish who she is as a woman, as a member of the police, as herself in her single status. And this is what is so interesting, to meet her as a wounded woman, recovering from a mastectomy, reassessing her identity and who she is in the masculine environs of the police force. And the way she gets pulled in to the details of both the local people and those interlopers is so fascinating-she straddles both sides and is accepted by both, seen as not really a threat because she is sick, she is off duty, but then finding attitudes change when she formally puts herself into the investigation when the lead detective drops out.

She asks of the reader what she asks of her boss-don’t give up on me.

Elise and Caro, her police friend who has walked a different path to her, their experiences as women in the police force fighting the ‘dyke or bike’ culture was so well done, in a few scenes she briskly reveals the reality of being that career forward woman in a profession that regards you as passing time until babies come along, at best.

There is a dark vein of humour which underlines the narrative, Ronnie as Elise’s sidekick and helper is fantastic, with her off the stage husband and his model railway, her comical plans to murder him just casually falling off her lips.

And Dee, the woman who people forget is even there half the time, who is looked down on because of her status, works so hard, is so family centered, that provides the counterpoint to Elise. Her history is bound up with this case more than any outsider realises, and it is the whole ”for the want of a nail’ sequence of events which is just so sad, inevitable and tragic. The actions of one person create this whole, decades long situation which culminates in a missing person investigation as it pulls apart what it means to really come from a certain place.

I don’t have more to say than this-if you liked her other books, you will love Local Gone Missing. If you haven’t read any of Fiona Barton’s novels, well what are you waiting for?!

About the author…

Fiona Barton’s debut, ‘The Widow’, was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and has been published in thirty-five countries and optioned for television. Her second novel, ‘The Child’, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Born in Cambridge, Fiona lives on the Sussex coast.

Previously, she was a senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at the Mail on Sunday, where she won Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards.

While working as a journalist, Fiona reported on many high-profile criminal cases and she developed a fascination with watching those involved, their body language and verbal tics. Fiona interviewed people at the heart of these crimes, from the guilty to their families, as well as those on the periphery, and found it was those just outside the spotlight who interested her most…

Links-https://fionabartonauthor.com/

Twitter @figbarton @RandomTTours @penguinrandom