Fiona Barton’s Local Gone Missing

It’s been a few years since Fiona Barton’s last book, but she’s back with Local Gone Missing. Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently talked with Barton for a virtual event. You can order a copy of the book through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3Hp3bf7

Here’s the description of Local Gone Missing.

Detective Elise King investigates a man’s disappearance in a seaside town where the locals and weekenders are at odds in this rich and captivating new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow.

Elise King is a successful and ambitious detective—or she was before a 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 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 house cleaner, often knows. She’s an invisible presence in many of the houses in town, but she sees and hears everything. 

The conflicts boil over when a newcomer wants to put the town on the map with a weekend music festival, and two teenagers overdose on drugs. When a man disappears the first night of the festival, Elise starts digging for answers. Ebbing is a small town, but it’s full of secrets and hidden connections that run deeper and darker than Elise could have ever imagined. 

“Barton presents such an embarrassment of riches. . . .Layers and layers of unlovely revelations about people who seemed perfectly nice.”         —Kirkus Reviews
“A captivating read. A first-grade suspense novel and highly recommended.” —MysteryTribune


Fiona Barton is the New York Times bestselling author of The WidowThe Child, and The Suspect. She has trained and worked with journalists all over the world. 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. Born in Cambridge, England, she lives in England.


Barton talks about her background as a journalist, and how her experience led to her books.