Cover Reveal + Author Q&A: LOCAL GONE MISSING by Fiona Barton
Available June 21, 2022 from Berkley
I am so honored to be able to exclusively reveal the cover for the newest novel by New York Times bestselling author Fiona Barton: LOCAL GONE MISSING, available in the US on June 21, 2022!! LOCAL GONE MISSING follows a detective investigating a man’s disappearance in a small seaside town, a place rife with tension between locals and weekenders that's just waiting to boil over. I’ve been reading Fiona’s work ever since the publication of her bestselling debut The Widow years ago—in fact, an advance copy of The Widow was one of the first advance copies I ever received for review here on Crime by the Book! I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Fiona in person over the years and have loved reading her carefully-crafted and character-driven crime novels. By the time Fiona’s new crime novel is published in 2022, it will have been three years since her last book released in the US, and I for one cannot wait to dig back into her work this coming year. I’m thrilled to be able to spotlight Fiona’s newest book LOCAL GONE MISSING for CBTB readers today! In today’s blog post, you can check out the book’s atmospheric cover, learn more about its plot, and read a mini Q&A with Fiona to get an early inside scoop on her newest release. Many thanks to Fiona for answering my questions about LOCAL GONE MISSING, and to her publisher for allowing me to reveal her book’s gorgeous cover here on CBTB!
LOCAL GONE MISSING by Fiona Barton
Available June 21, 2022
About the Book:
Detective Elise King investigates a man’s disappearance in a seaside town where the locals and weekenders are at odds with each other 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 giant music festival, and two teenagers overdose on drugs. When a man 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 secrets and hidden connections that run deeper and darker than Elise could have ever imagined.
Mini Q&A with Fiona Barton
A Sneak Peek into Fiona’s New Crime Novel LOCAL GONE MISSING
Crime by the Book: Can you identify a moment that first sparked the idea for LOCAL GONE MISSING?
Fiona Barton: Finding myself face to face with someone who had plainly reinvented themselves. No names, no pack drill but this person had told people in the town he had recently moved to that he had all sorts of important connections and a colourful past. Unfortunately for him, we met at a party and I can remember listening to his boasts with a growing sense of disbelief. The thing was that I knew from my career as a journalist, that he was not who he said he was.
I loved the fact that it just takes a bit of chutzpah to create a new persona and shed your old skin when you arrive in a new community. There must be hundreds of men and women doing just that at this precise moment. Until a simple twist of fate – someone who can lay bare the lies - arrives. The jeopardy is palpable – and delicious.
CBTB: Tell us about your book’s protagonist, Elise. Who is she, and how would you describe her to someone meeting her for the first time?
FB: DI Elise King, is a successful and ambitious Major Crime Team detective, whose job is at the centre of everything. At 43, she has it all under control: her career path and a partner she believes wants the same things. But, the sudden break-up of their relationship, a move to a new town and a diagnosis of breast cancer turn her life and sense of self upside down. Preparing this book, I talked to some remarkable women detectives dealing with cancer. They are not only fighting their own battles, they are campaigning for awareness and better treatment. And they were wonderfully open, frank – and funny - about their fears; the daily challenges of being seen as ‘a victim’ by colleagues, the horrors of hair loss and ‘chemo brain’ and forgetting what you are talking about…
I used these insights to feel Elise’s fear that she may never be the woman or detective she once was - until she is reluctantly drawn into looking for a missing neighbour.
CBTB: LOCAL GONE MISSING explores the tension and conflicts between locals and weekenders in a small seaside town. Why were you interested in exploring these class disparities in your new thriller?
FB: I moved to the seaside for the first time in my life in 2018 and became fascinated by the impact of outsiders on small communities. Reading online neighbourhood forums, I could see that people festered about things they saw every day: garden boundaries, blocked views, bad parking. And the anger! As Elise says: ‘It could fill their every waking moment until it became a full-blown feud. She’d once nicked an ex-mayor who’d stabbed his eighty-year-old neighbour over an unpainted fence panel.’
It was meat and drink to a thriller writer…
CBTB: What are you most excited about as you look towards the release of LOCAL GONE MISSING?
FB: Putting a new character out there. Local Gone Missing was a step into the unknown. I felt like a newbie again when I sat down to write; I had a cast of totally new characters and a fresh location to wrangle. I’d decided that Kate Waters had earned a lie down after three books so I had no reporter centre stage to poke her nose in and drive the story. I wanted to try something different and fell in love with the idea of a woman detective at a turning point in her life.
Pre-Order Local Gone Missing (Available 6/21/22):
Barnes & Noble | Amazon | IndieBound | Bookshop.org
Home ownership feel like a distant dream? Zillow listings have you convinced you’ll be renting for the rest of your life? The woman at the heart of Carissa Orlando’s debut The September House feels your pain—and she’s prepared to put up with a lot if it means she and her husband can finally have a place to call their own. In this case, that might just mean living in a house that’s haunted. Playful and irreverent, spine-tingling and spooky, The September House puts a fresh spin on the classic haunted house story, delivering an immersive tale about the secrets lurking within one building’s walls, and within the lives of its inhabitants.