DI Elise King is currently on sick leave after major surgery, but there is only so much resting that she can do! So when the opportunity to do a little bit of investigating presents itself when one of the locals in her small town goes missing, she jumps at the chance. It is always amazing how many secrets can be found in a small town.

With many characters and dual timelines, this one took a bit of concentrating! Luckily it started off quite slow giving a great opportunity to get to grips with the story and who was who, before building momentum and adding in some twists too. It did feel that some parts, and particularly some characters were not looked at too much, but I am hoping that we might see more from Elise and find out more about that back story in a sequel!

Another of my favourite authors and I could not wait to read this novel.

The blurb reads -

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.


I really could not wait to get started on this novel and for me personally, it did not disappoint. We meet main character Elise, who is recovering from cancer, she is on leave from the police and is, lets say quite bored at home and need of the thrill of her job.

The seaside town she lives in is full of weekend revellers and the locals are not happy they are taking over their quaint town. One of their local men go missing, a man called Charlie and this gets Elise's attention. Elise is soon thrown back into work and on a mission to solve the puzzling case.

A good light mystery/thriller that did, at times confuse me. There is so much going on but I did enjoy the reading and the descriptions that Fiona Barton paints when she writes her novels.

Thanks to Fiona Barton, NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me a copy of this novel.

An enjoyable introduction to Elise with a nice mystery for her to solve. Would be a good start to a series. Thanks for the opportunity to read

3.5 stars
This is a good read but a bit confusing at times.
A man goes missing after last being seen at a local music festival and his wife is desparate to find him. It comes to light that they’ve been having money troubles and Charlie also has a daughter in a care home to support.
There’s chapters from the past intermingled with the story and with the many characters in the present, you really need to pay attention.
I found the book a bit confusing at times as it jumped around a bit but overall it’s a good mystery.
Thanks to Random House UK and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Charlie is local, Charlie is missing, Charlie is not who the locals think he is, Charlie is currently tied to a chair in an old mansion – and someone is behind him. Seventeen days ago, things appeared to his friends and acquaintances to be going well for Charlie – pillar of the community, collector for charity, full of bonhomie, fingers in lots of pies, skilled investor. Of course, anyone one like this is going to be a conman, and he has been very successful in this role, but now he is experiencing a cash flow problem, mainly caused by his gold-digging second wife and the old mansion she made him buy which requires a fortune’s worth of renovations. He has other problems stemming back twenty years to a botched burglary during which his daughter, Birdie, had been seriously injured leading to recurrent memory loss and blindness and her boyfriend had been killed. Birdie now lives in a hugely expensive residential home, which he can no longer afford, and the burglar has just been released on licence and may cause certain questions to be raised. Two other villagers become involved in the search to find Charlie, the local cleaner, Dee Eastwood, a source of inside information about all of the prominent characters, and Elise King, currently on sick leave but shortly to return to her role as a Detective Inspector and take over the investigation. Although an attempt is made to make DI King a cop with problems, like mind fog and insecurity, this aspect is neither an aside nor a driver, in fact she isn’t really a very solid character. Who is Charlie really? Has he been kidnapped because of local issues or is his dubious past catching up with him?
The story is told from the viewpoints of these three characters, which works quite well although it doesn’t get going properly until DI King takes the reins and the story moves forward as a police procedural, albeit with the reader acquiring information not available to the investigators. More reactive than proactive. Several plot lines develop and there is a certain number of red herrings being dragged through, but it isn’t very complex to resolve. Although there are a couple of slightly ‘fortunate’ reveals, the ending is neat and tidy, and I enjoyed the precision. I give it 3.5 rounded to 4.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

Local Gone Missing is the first book I’ve read by Fiona Barton. I found it a good read but a bit predictable in places. 3.5 ⭐️

Local Gone Missing by Fiona Barton is a very clever story about a confidence trickster, Charlie Williams. It is a very clever storyline with many twists and turns. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
Highly recommended

Following her Kate Waters series of books I was interested to read this stand alone.
There are several strands to this story - a popular elderly man who goes missing; two teenagers who are rushed to hospital with a drugs overdose; unrest in the village between locals and in-comers; a Detective on sick leave not ready to return to work, but anxious to get involved in what is happening around her. There are several characters and I found it quite confusing sorting out who was who. Nevertheless, this was an absorbing, cleverly plotted story.
Many thanks to Netgalley/Fiona Barton/Random House UK for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

A well written book with a cleverly twisty plot. I did feel at times though that the writer was almost trying too hard, with so many characters, many of whom remained quite two dimensional, and also looking at women returning to work - post maternity leave and sick leave. This was an interesting focus, but again needed a bit more discussion and detail to involve the reader.
thank you to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book

Everyone's a suspect when a local goes missing.

Elise King is a Detective Inspector in the sleepy seaside town of Ebbing, she is currently on sick leave but is itching to get back to how things were, so when a local goes missing she decides to do some digging of her own and is surprised how many secrets the residents of a small town can keep under wraps.

Local Gone Missing is a multi perspective story told across two timelines which bounces back and forth between events leading up to and after the disappearance. The story, for me, started off as a slow burner and was very busy with all the different characters so it took a while for me to grasp what was going on. As the pieces of the jigsaw began to slot into place I found it to be an intriguing read with some very interesting characters and some great twists along the way, which had me on the edge of my seat at times. I believe this is a standalone but it would be great to see a sequel to this and learn more about the main characters.

I'd like to thank Random House UK Transworld and Netgalley for the approval, I will post my review on Goodreads now and Amazon on publication day.

This somewhat convoluted tale is set in a the small seaside town of Ebbing. DI Elise King is recovering from surgery following a diagnosis of cancer when she sees a man at a local festival. Nothing to strange about that except this man, Charlie Perry goes missing. Meanwhile two local teenagers end up in hospital and the whole town is awash with rumour.

I really enjoyed the characters, Dee the cleaner, Elsie and her sidekick Ronnie and even Charlie's wife Pauline was so awful you couldn't help but see her in contrast to the good folk of Ebbing. However there was both too much going on in all the intricacies of everyone's lives, and not quite enough to get a good pace going on as far as the mystery was concerned.

There was a sting in the tale as once the pace picked up we rattled onward to the ending.

As with Fiona Bartons previous books this one is well written with credible characters and a very well developed plot and fast moving and exciting storyline. I loved reading the different characters points of view too. Elise is great character too and I can also imagine what she looks like,. This is a great book and highly recommended.

This is a cracking read from the excellent Fiona Barton, whose exciting thrillers are always page turners. Local Gone Missing is set in a seaside town where there is simmering conflict between the locals and the incomers, those who have holiday homes in Ebbing. A DI has moved there following the break up of a relationship and, when a resident goes missing, she cannot resist getting involved even though she is officially off sick. The range of characters, all of whom have secrets, is beautifully drawn, and the list of suspects seemingly endless. A wonderful tale!

This was a lovely plot although because of the multitude of village characters it made it a slow start up. It was easy to read and would make a nice summer crime book to read. The timing of present and past times made it difficult to follow always but did not detract from me wanting to continue to read.
The interaction of the villagers and their different life styles was interesting and I particularly liked Ronnie as the nosy but helpful neighbour who was always trying her best.
I failed to understand why Elise's ex husband made an appearance and then almost straight away a disappearance as this did not really add anything to the interest of the story.
Fiona has written a warm crime novel that will be enjoyed by many this summer.

I found this book to be a bit confusing to be honest. We have multiple characters, none of whom we really get to know in any depth, and a story which jumps back and forwards in time, which never really worked. I never really got into the book for these reasons and picked it up and down a number of times. The pace was steady throughout but it's just a cosy mystery to be read on holiday and pass a few hours. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

DI Elise King has returned to her coastal home town of Ebbing to recover from her cancer surgery when she gets embroiled in a missing person case, unofficially of course! Egged on by her elderly neighbour, the indomitable Ronnie who takes every opportunity to skip out on her boring husband, she chauffeurs Elise around and digs up many little nuggets of information.

Elise and Ronnie were both at the music festival on the Friday night, the festival that many locals arced up about, and Elise noticed local ‘celebrity’ Charlie Perry staggering around looking most unwell. His wife, Pauline (I used to be a model you know) finally reports him missing on the Saturday but is not overly concerned. They are both in their seventies but Pauline still has dreams of grandeur and is having it away with a much younger man whenever Charlie is not around.

Poor Charlie’s body turns up late on Sunday. He is lying dead in the cellar of the decrepit old mansion Pauline insisted on buying but that they now cannot afford to refurbish enough to make it liveable. He has a nasty head wound that seems to be the cause of death. It soon transpires that quite a few people had a bone to pick with Charlie about his dodgy investment schemes and the suspect pool keeps growing.

But when Elise learns that Charlie Perry has no history she starts to dig deeper. His actual name was Charles Herbert Williams and he once had a flash home in London which was burgled. In the course of that burglary his daughter, 18 year old Birdie was severely injured and now needs constant care. Her boyfriend was killed. Elise realises the answer to Charlie’s death may lie 20 years in the past.

I would call this a cosy mystery. It started quite slowly and didn’t get particularly interesting until the second half. The characters were well portrayed, many of them having secrets. My favourite was Ronnie, I would love to have a Ronnie for a neighbour. Charlie was, well, charming but hopeless with money although he did dote on his daughter. The timeline jumps were not consistent and I found them quite annoying so eventually just ignored them, I think the story could have flowed better in this regard. The pacing built very gradually until a mostly satisfying ending. Many thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for the much appreciated arc which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

Slow paced, multiple narrators and shifting timelines. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does, mainly due to the main character Elise. She is such a relatable character! Brave, yet worried about returning to normal life some of the characters are 2 dimensional, such as Elise’s ex, who added nothing to the plot by appearing in the story. It maybe rambles too much to be thrilling, and is not sure which genre it is referencing? I enjoyed it though and would certainly like to read more about Elise.

I really struggled with this..I felt that it was a rather loose plot and there seemed to be a new character every few pages, I completely lost track of them all. I read to the end as I I hate to give up on a book, but really felt that this one lacked a certain spark. Shame

I absolutely adored this novel and was rooting for Elise the whole way through.
Fiona Barton has a particular skill that makes you believe and root for the characters who are shrouded in a reality so bleak and depressing it’s actually a fantastic read.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher’s chance to read this!!!

Detective Elise King is on sick leave, recovering from cancer, but getting ready to return to work. Elise lives in a small Sussex town called Ebbing and, when a local man, Charlie, goes missing, she can’t help getting involved.

Parts of the story are narrated by Dee, a domestic cleaner, who listens and observes but doesn’t gossip.

A great page-turner that I really enjoyed.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, and Bantam Press for an advance reader copy in return for an honest review.