South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
‘Local Gone Missing’ in a seaside British town; Austen meets Holmes in ‘Verifiers’
How do you cope when you can’t do the job that you love and that your identity is tied to? That’s the dilemma that British author Fiona Barton expertly explores in the engrossing “Local Gone Missing” with Det. Insp. Elise King.
The police detective is on leave as senior officer of a Major Crimes Team in London as she recovers from breast cancer treatments at her home in Ebbing, a small British seaside community. She takes care of herself, undergoes chemo and eats healthful meals, but what she “needs” is to get back to work, worrying “how am I ever going to be me.”
Being on leave hasn’t meant Elise has forgotten her investigative skills. Ebbing has plenty of intrigue. This quiet area has become a hotbed of development with “weekenders” from London and tourists converging, driving up prices so that locals can’t afford a home, hiring outside “cheap labor” rather than from the area and drawing the resentment and outright hostility of the residents. Elise spends a lot of time watching the town from her window “like being back on surveillance” and talking with her neighbor, Ronnie, a librarian thrilled that a real police detective is next door and they can talk about crime. But Elise longs to be more than “a sick woman spying on the folks of Ebbing.”
Although she can’t officially be involved, Elise clandestinely investigates the disappearance of
73-year-old Charlie Perry. He was charming, friendly, “practically canonized” by the residents, devoted to his daughter Birdie, who he supports in an expensive residential care facility and who was brain-damaged during a violent burglary
20 years before. But Charlie also was a liar, a con man, a cheat with an even darker side than scamming people out of their life savings.
Barton smoothly moves “Local Gone Missing” from Elise’s narrative to the story of cleaning woman Dee Eastwood, who works for most of Ebbing and knows that she’s “invisible” to most of her employers. Dee hears and sees everything but she doesn’t gossip.
The brisk plot moves at a precise pace as Barton’s affinity for believable characters shines in “Local Gone Missing.” Elise is careful to keep her police colleagues informed of her findings, and her team rejoices, as will the reader, when she returns to work and officially takes over the case of Charlie’s disappearance.
Her friendship with Ronnie adds a bit of levity as Elise learns that her affable neighbor is quite the perceptive amateur sleuth. Barton expertly uses a police procedural to explore how an intelligent woman comes to terms with her illness while not allowing cancer to rule her life and how the transition of a small town affects its residents.
Matchmaking PI
Online dating sites have helped hundreds of thousands find love and even happy marriages. But those connections also can open the door to scams, thefts and assaults. Enter a company like Veracity, which checks information for clients worried those potential suitors may be lying, as Jane Pek explores in her lively debut “The Verifiers.”
“The Verifiers” works well as a look at modern matchmaking, as a paean to crime fiction, a story of a tightly knit Asian family and a young woman navigating her attraction to other women.
A job as a verifier at Veracity appeals to Claudia Lin, who puts her lifelong love of mystery fiction to work ferreting out the truth of people the clients meet on any of the dozens of dating platforms. She thinks of herself as “some latter-day love child of Jane Austen and Sherlock Holmes.”
The two people who run Veracity are rather full of themselves. They say those aren’t matchmaker or dating sites but “relationship management companies.” Veracity thrives on being low-profile; the clients’ confidentiality clause includes not even acknowledging Veracity exists. Claudia and clients call it a dating detective agency, a term the arrogant owners bristle at as they prefer “personal investments advisory firm.”
The tenacious Claudia enthusiastically looks into the background of a man who seems to have disappeared. Claudia’s not sure if it’s the man who is lying or her female client; in less than two weeks, one of them is dead.
As Claudia knows, “people lie. All the time, especially on the Internet, and extra especially where anything with the potential for romance is concerned.” Pek’s strong, unusual, a bit snarky voice elevates “The Verifiers.” Her solid plotting is enhanced by a witty approach and affinity for characters. During her investigations, Claudia wonders how Inspector Yuan, her favorite “comfortread” private investigator, would handle the situation. Don’t try to order the Yuan series, it doesn’t exist, just part of Pek’s fiction and her fun with the mystery tropes.
Claudia’s loving friction with her immigrant Chinese mother, who raised her three children alone, adds texture. Her mother wants Claudia to have a career in a stuffy office and settle down with a nice Chinese man — neither which interests Claudia.
“The Verifiers” is a sharp debut, leaving room for more of Claudia’s escapades.