BOOK REVIEW: Local Gone Missing by Fiona Barton #localgonemissing #bookreview #policeprocedural

Though it took me a bit to get into, the characters and setting are well-developed, the structure works, and the ending is satisfying. Local Gone Missing is a different feel than Fiona Barton’s prior work because it is really more of a police procedural and the setting is more run down, but I’m glad I stuck with it and enjoyed the pacing!

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.

Setting and Structure

Local Gone Missing is set in the fictional seaside town of Ebbing. Ebbing isn’t exactly what I expected, which was a cozy town of locals divided against the more affluent visitors. Instead the town of Ebbing is full of some shady characters and local town gossip. It also has the affluent visitors but they aren’t as important to the story, which truly centers on the locals in Ebbing, many of whom are… well, shady characters, to say the least!

The structure is more typical for Barton’s work, with short chapters that alternate perspectives and timelines. Elise (who I would consider our main character) gets the bulk of the chapters, but we get a good amount from Dee (the town maid) and just enough from our missing character Charlie to keep things interesting. The past timeline starts seventeen days prior to the beginning of the present time and works towards it. There is quite a bit of backstory as well.

Plot and Characters

While Barton’s prior work centers around a journalist, Local Gone Missing centers largely around the town of Ebbing and DI Elise King who is on a medical leave recovering from breast cancer. Elise has always been passionate about her work as a detective, but her battle with cancer and a broken heart have left her rebuilding her life. Recuperating at her home in the aspiring resort town of Ebbing, Elise happens to find her skills needed sooner than expected when local man Charlie Percy goes missing. Though not officially a member of the local police, Elise begins to investigate on her own at the prompting of her next door neighbor Ronnie.

Charlie Percy is an interesting figure in the book. At first he seems like a saint for committing to care for his middle-aged daughter who was left blind and mentally handicapped after an attack when she was in her twenties. But all is not quite what it seems with Charlie. He is also married to ex-model Pauline (who is on her own a hilarious character in the novel) and she has dwindled his substantial income on a money pit of a house and the expensive care home he pays for his daughter to live in, Wadham Manor. We learn some from Charlie himself in the past before he goes missing, and we learn other things about him during Elise’s unofficial investigation after.

The other main character of the book (although she is sort of a side character who is featured like a main character) is Dee Eastwood. Dee is a housekeeper for many residents of Ebbing and she’s learned that the best way to keep herself employed is by keeping what she learns about the residents of the houses she cleans to herself. That doesn’t mean that Dee doesn’t pick up on things. In fact, she knows secrets and the truth about almost everyone in town.

Overall Thoughts

One thing I liked about Local Gone Missing was that the majority of the mystery and clues were based on conversations among characters rather than heavy procedural evidence. This benefited the circumstances where Elise isn’t exactly official investigating. However, this also mean the book is very dialogue heavy. In fact, it felt like very little was not based on dialogue and at times I did want a bit more internal thoughts from some of the characters.

At its core, this is a mystery about a small town full of gossip and a cast of characters who seem nice on the surface but who largely are not. It is a bit quirky and I enjoyed the way it wrapped up. It was a bit slow to get into and I almost put it aside but I’m glad I didn’t. The back half delivers!