The Suspect

(Bantam Press) Reviewer: Jess O Sullivan When two teenagers on a gap year in Thailand disappear, their worried families are pitched into the middle of every parent’s worst nightmare. Barton effectively tells the story from end to beginning, as the girls hurtle naively towards their fate. This end as beginning means there is a little too much foreshadowing of events at times, but that is easy to overlook as the fast-paced narrative unravels. It is told using the many viewpoints of the players, out to discover the truth: the media pack, the police, the frantic families and even the girls themselves. The true heart of this book lies in the stories and the character motivations, which are given the space to develop so we get emotionally invested. This book sits more comfortably in the crime drama genre than thriller, but it is a tense and smart whodunit all the same.