Book Review for Talking to Strangers by Fiona Barton

 Elise King #2

Talking to Strangers by Fiona Barton

Published:  August 27, 2024 by Berkley

Genre:  Mystery Thriller

Taken from Goodreads:  Detective Elise King’s investigation into a woman’s murder is getting derailed by a reporter who insists on doing her own investigation in this nail-biting mystery from the author of Local Gone Missing.

When Karen Simmons is murdered on Valentine’s Day, Detective Elise King wonders if she was killed by a man she met online. Karen was all over the dating apps, leading some townspeople to blame her for her own death, while others band together to protest society’s violence against women. Into the divide comes Kiki Nunn, whose aggressive newsgathering once again antagonizes Elise.

A single mother of a young daughter, Kiki is struggling to make a living in the diminished news landscape. Getting a scoop in the Simmons murder would do a lot for her career, and she’s willing to go up against not just Elise but the killer himself to do it.

My Thoughts:  Oh My Gosh!  This book!! I could not put it down.   I devoured every word, every sentence, every paragraph, and every chapter.  I really liked that so many characters were strong women.   They took on the roles men are usually put in, detective and journalist, and did the job very well and without any doubts.   

The murder mystery had so many leads that I was not sure which way to go and if I would be heading in the correct direction.   I like that I was kept guessing.  There were many characters that could have been guilty and none of them were ever made to be innocent.   The ending…well, I will not give it away, but I did not see it coming at all.  

Talking to Strangers is a great mystery thriller.  I recommend it.

 

Thank you Berkley for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

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Meet Fiona Barton (taken from her website):   My career has taken some surprising twists and turns over the years. I have been a journalist - senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at The Mail on Sunday, where I won Reporter of the Year at the National Press Awards, gave up my job to volunteer in Sri Lanka and since 2008, have trained and worked with exiled and threatened journalists all over the world.

But through it all, a story was cooking in my head.

The worm of my first book infected me long ago when, as a national newspaper journalist covering notorious crimes and trials, I found myself wondering what the wives of those accused really knew - or allowed themselves to know.

It took the liberation of my career change to turn that fascination into a tale of a missing child, narrated by the wife of the man suspected of the crime, the detective leading the hunt, the journalist covering the case and the mother of the victim.

Much to my astonishment and delight, The Widow was published in 36 countries and made the Sunday Times and New York Times Best Seller lists.

It gave me the confidence to write a second book ,The Child, in which I return to another story that had intrigued me as a journalist. It begins with the discovery of a newborn's skeleton on a building site. It only makes a paragraph in an evening newspaper but for three women it's impossible to ignore.

The Child will be published in June 2017 and I am embarking on my next novel. My husband and I are still living the good life in south-west France, where I am writing in bed, early in the morning when the only distraction is our cockerel, Titch, crowing.