Books Read: The Child by Fiona Barton

When a paragraph in an evening newspaper reveals a decades-old tragedy, most readers barely give it a glance. But for three strangers it’s impossible to ignore.

For one woman, it’s a reminder of the worst thing that ever happened to her.

For another, it reveals the dangerous possibility that her darkest secret is about to be discovered.

And for the third, a journalist, it’s the first clue in a hunt to uncover the truth.

The Child’s story will be told.

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I'd like to thank Anne Cater from Random Things Through my Letterbox for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour and Transworld Books for my copy of The Child to review.

A missing child is every parent's worst nightmare, and the longer the time that passes the less likely that answers will be found, so when the grisly discovery of a baby's skeleton is discovered on a construction site it might mean that one family will finally be able to lay their child to rest.  But it wouldn't be much of a story without a few twists, turns and red herrings along the way.

It's clear that from the start that due to the length of time that has passed since the baby was buried that it's highly unlikely that anyone who lived in the area at that time would still be around.  But for journalist Kate this is the type of juicy story that she wants to investigate to get herself noticed at the newspaper, especially at a time when print readership is in the decline.  During the course of the investigation Kate's path crosses with Angela, Emma and her mother Jude, which had me questioning their connections with the case.  What follows was a complex story of family relationships, secrets, lies, and eventual truths waiting to be discovered.

I loved the pairing with Kate and rookie Joe, who is used to the trappings of technology, as between them they worked well as a team using both their strengths to find the clues and answers that eventually lead to the conclusion of this case.  Although I'm not always sure the police involved with the historic and current cases were always grateful for their help!

With its gritty themes that were handled sensitively The Child had me gripped from start to finish, and although I had guessed the eventual outcome quite early on it didn't bother me that I had as it still had me wanting to read on to find out if I was correct. As I've not read Fiona Barton's debut novel The Widow, I didn't realise until afterwards that the journalist in this story Kate Waters also featured in that story so I'll now need to add that book to my never ending TBR list... one day I'll have all the time in the world to read all the books!