Novels No. 67

Fiona Barton. Local Gone Missing. USA: Penguin, 2022.

DI Elise King is on leave, recovering from cancer surgery in her new home in coastal town Ebbing. She's becoming accustomed to the locals who resent the weekenders with their holiday homes, although their business spending is welcome. Elise's cleaner, Dee, is a local who avoids gossip, unlike the majority including her neighbour Ronnie who's always on hand to help out. When two teenagers overdose at the town's music festival sponsored by Pete Diamond—an event protested by the locals—it's Elise who finds them, and quickly discovers her friend DS Caro Brennan is on the job. Finding the drug dealer is Caro's mission, but the disappearance of affable, man-about-town Charlie Perry becomes a project for Elise; Ronnie enthusiastically rides shotgun for her. Charlie, saddled with mouthy, vitriolic wife Pauline, has been privately agonizing over the amount of his debts and how to pay for his disabled daughter's care.

Besides following Elise's path, we hear from Dee—worried that husband Liam is secretly up to no good with pub owner Dave and/or possibly using drugs again. On top of that, she's hiding a concern about her recently deceased brother and his criminal associates. Everyone in town gets even more tense when Charlie's body is found; he was not the only local person experiencing serious financial trouble. Elise is pronounced fit to work again, to officially head the murder investigation. She has her hands full with uncovering Charlie's strange connections, and why he was so broke.

Good characters here; dizzying twists employed. Motivations for nefarious activities are not necessarily what they seem and keep you guessing. Detective Elise King appears in Barton's next book, Talking to Strangers, so that should be a treat.

Bits

▪ "Bottom line, Charlie, is that we can't afford any more. Surely there's a council place she could go to?" (27)

▪ Charlie's face looked ghoulish and distorted in the green spotlights raking the crowd, his eyes bulging and his mouth wide open. (40)

▪ They were very different animals: Caro was brilliant at thinking on her feet but incapable of being anywhere on time, while Elise was borderline OCD. (43)

▪ "I don't believe he would abandon his daughter without a word." (103)

▪ I should ring Liam and warn him but I don't want to talk to him. The look on his face when he heard the radio this morning. (156)

▪ "He's as guilty as sin but we'll have to start again to build a case." (169)

▪ "It was only supposed to be a one-off. A pity shag. But she wouldn't let it go." (219)

▪ "And there were some very valuable antiques and jewelry[sic] missing but we found only Mr. Williams's computer in Bennett's squat." (275)

Amy Gentry. Last Woman Standing. USA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.

It's not in your usual mystery novel that a stand-up comedian plays the protagonist. But fate often seems to push Dana Diaz into involuntary commitments. She's in Austin to prepare for a contest that attracts comedy acts from across the country. Not a terribly social person, she finds herself enjoying the company of a stranger, Amanda, who had applauded her turn at the mic. Common ground in the new friendship is that both had been deeply humiliated and hurt by controlling men. Amanda, a software/cyber techie, doesn't spare her fury over her (now ex-) boss Doug who had royally screwed her out of her job. Dana is slower to confess her inadvertent sexual incident with Aaron Neely who happens to be one of the contest judges and influential in the industry. Soon after, Neely mysteriously leaves both town and contest, to Dana's great relief and Amanda's triumphant glee ... oh yes, a little blackmail works. And Amanda has a plan for Dana to return the favour: Round One. Reluctantly Dana obliges, and in doing so, discovers Betty—a disturbing new self to enhance her stage performances.

Success urges them on and Amanda wants Round Two of their grievance pact. Down go two more "guys like that": misogynistic men. Dana's favour for Amanda goes awry, Dana recognizing ruefully that vengeance accelerates her own taste for violence. Then Dana places second in the comedy contest finals, getting serious sponsor attention; she's off to LA for big-time opportunities and reconnecting with her old writing partner Jason. She ignores Amanda's demands for Round Three, unaware of the bizarre consequences approaching. Soon the pressure is on Dana to sort out the truth from lies while trying to protect herself and Jason from being stalked. The tables are turned deftly, more than once.

Oh-so-clever author, Ms Gentry. Only a master craftswoman could create such credible but damaged personalities, maintaining an elevated suspense level. But I must say, it all sort of makes you want to go to Austin—sounded like a fun town at that time with the competing comedians.

Dana

▪ It seemed possible at that moment that she might become, if not a fan, something I needed even more: a friend. (15)

▪ What he'd liked was humiliating me in the back of his SUV, showing me how small and insignificant and utterly disposable I was to a man like him and, by extension, to the industry whose highest ranks he represented. (32)

▪ Betty stood up again and swung the statue into his ribs and watched him crumple to the floor. (116)

▪ "She knows I'm here, and she knows I'm with you. She's been sending me creepy messages." (189)

▪ She didn't want me just to hurt Jason; she wanted me to kill him. (236)

▪ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. A death for a death. She was homicidal. (236)

Amanda

▪ "Once we moved in together, he started hiding my phone to keep me from going to auditions. Spying on me. Threatening me." (10)

▪ "Neely doesn't know who we are, but we have this video. We know everything about him, and we can get to him any time." (56)

▪ "I've got skills, remember?" she said, wiggling her fingers like a magician. "Just leave it to me." (38)

▪ "I got your back," she prompted. "Now you get mine." (57)

▪ "He's too savvy to open a link, but if you can upload this to his computer, we can do some serious damage." (98)

▪ "But you can't run away from this forever. You have one more name, Dana. And so do I." (124-5)