Playing on our deepest fear
In a culture where peace, political stability and relative prosperity have been the norm for over 50 years, the aspiring suspense or horror author may well ask: what is left for readers to fear? Not only are people living longer, healthier lives, they’ve stopped believing in an all-seeing God who punishes their transgressions. The resounding answer, if the bestseller lists (and the plot lines of binge-worthy TV series) are anything to go by, is the fear of losing a loved one, especially a child.
Fiona Barton, a British ex-journalist turned author, mined the lost child theme to an almost unbearable degree in her bestselling debut novel, The Widow.
The Child, Barton’s followup, brings back two characters from The Widow, investigative reporter Kate Walters and Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes, for a new case of a missing child. The novel opens with Kate looking into a story largely ignored by the media: the discovery of a baby’s skeleton, buried decades earlier, at a south London building site.
The initial investigation points to the unsolved case of a newborn baby abducted in a maternity ward in the early 1970s. Aided by a trainee reporter, Kate begins to dig deeper, discovering a web of halftruths, lies and dark secrets linking several former and current residents of the neighbourhood where the bones were discovered.
Barton employs the same multi-narrator technique she exploited so effectively in her debut, providing readers with several compelling but ultimately unreliable or limited testimonials.
Kate Walters is emerging as a seriesworthy heroine, her daily beat of newsrooms, pubs, police stations and bedsits brought to life with a journalist’s eye for the telling detail.
Readers’ appreciation for a protagonist as likeable and morally grounded as Kate will likely grow in proportion to their repulsion for the perpetrators. Barton once again reveals her undeniable gift for getting inside the minds of sexual predators and the passive-aggressive women who enable their crimes.
Make no mistake: The Child is an unabashedly (but nondidactic) feminist novel that dramatizes the connections between sexual exploitation and the society in which sex crimes are perpetrated and too often go unpunished.
Barton knows what we’re afraid of — our inability to protect society’s most vulnerable members from harm — and she’s not afraid to plunge us headfirst into the abyss, for all the right reasons. James Grainger is the author of Harmless.