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The Child by Fiona Barton

Thriller

The Child

by Fiona Barton

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Quick take

"Because readers see the mystery through the eyes of Kate, a reporter, it’s easy to feel as though you are a part of the investigation, too."

Free sample

The Child

From chapter one:

Emma Tuesday, March 20, 2012

My computer is winking at me knowingly when I sit down at my desk. I touch the keyboard, and a photo of Paul appears on my screen. It's the one I took of him in Rome on our honeymoon, eyes full of love across a table in the Campo dei Fiori. I try to smile back at him but as I lean in, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the screen and stop. I hate seeing myself without warning. Don't recognize myself sometimes. You think you know what you look like and there is this stranger looking at you. It can frighten me.

But today I study the stranger's face. The brown hair half pulled up on top of the head in a frantic work bun, naked skin, shadows and lines creeping towards the eyes like cracks in a pavement. "Christ, you look awful," I tell the woman on the screen. The movement of her mouth mesmerizes me and I make her speak some more.

"Come on, Emma, get some work done," she says. I smile palely at her and she smiles back.

"This is mad behavior," she tells me in my own voice, and I stop. Thank God Paul can't see me now, I think.

When Paul gets home tonight, he's tired and a bit grumpy after a day of "boneheaded" undergraduates and another row with his department head over the timetable.

Maybe it's an age thing, but it seems to really shake Paul to be challenged at work these days. I think he must be starting to doubt himself, see threats to his position everywhere. University departments are like prides of lions, really. Lots of males preening and screwing around and hanging on to their superiority by their dewclaws. I say all the right things and make him a gin and tonic.

When I move his briefcase off the sofa, I see he's brought home a copy of the Evening Standard. He must've picked it up on the tube.

I sit and read it while he showers away the cares of the day, and it's then I see the paragraph about the baby.

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Why I love it

Is there any explanation for why summer is the perfect season to indulge in what I—somewhat affectionately—like to call "murder books"? You know exactly what kind of book I’m talking about: that special brand of addictive thriller that features a female lead—maybe a journalist, maybe a detective, maybe just a woman with a troubled past—who finds herself knee-deep in some sort of mystery—maybe involving a murder, maybe involving a kidnapping, and almost certainly involving the aforementioned troubled past. I don’t know why I love to read them in the hazy, languid days of summer, but I do. Perhaps it’s because the long days and fevered air makes it feel as though nothing bad, and everything bad, can happen.

In The Child, Fiona Barton delivers an exquisite version of "murder book." The story once again follows Kate Waters, who you may recognize from Barton’s debut, The Widow. Kate is an intrepid, tenacious journalist who could be described as a British Olivia Benson, if Law & Order ever launched a spinoff in London. Fueled by equal parts ambition, curiosity, and genuine empathy for the victims, Waters digs into the strange case of a dead baby, whose skeleton was recently unearthed by construction workers in a gentrifying neighborhood of London. The baby has been dead for decades, but Kate is determined to discover who she is and how she died. But with no solid leads, Kate is forced to pose the following question to her newspaper’s readers: "Who Is The Building Site Baby?"

As Kate dives further into the case, she unearths some troubling truths—and realizes there’s more at play to this mystery than the bones of a child. What she discovers is a tragedy that could completely upend the lives of three different women: Angela, the mother of a daughter named Alice, who went missing hours after her birth and was never found; Emma, a mysterious, troubled freelance editor who could have information about the identity of the baby; and Jude, Emma’s mother.

Because readers see the mystery through the eyes of Kate, a reporter, it’s easy to feel as though you are a part of the investigation, too. I jotted down clues along the way—as Kate discovered them—and found that, by the end, I had figured it out. That doesn’t lessen the satisfaction of the reading experience, however. The Child proves that a good mystery is as much about the investigation as the resolution.

Member ratings (3,353)

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View all
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Darling Girls
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
Only if You’re Lucky
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Collective
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
The Last Flight
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Wife Upstairs
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
Invisible Girl
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Winter Sister
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless