Veteran journalist Kate Waters and DI Bob Sparkes find themselves divided by a life-changing case in this fine series' third installment (after The Child, 2017). Informed by Sparkes, Kate breaks the story of two English girls, Alex O'Conner and Rosie Shaw, who have gone missing in Thailand. When their parents are summoned to identify bodies pulled from a Bangkok hostel fire, Kate heads to Thailand. But she isn't prepared to become part of the story when she discovers that her son, Jake, who has supposedly been working in Phuket, has vanished after being treated for burns sustained in the Bangkok fire. Casting Jake's disappearance as guilty flight, Kate's colleagues paint him as a villain. With Bangkok police refusing to investigate and Sparkes leaning toward Jake's guilt, Kate digs into Rosie's hard-partying expat circle and the hostel owner's underworld connections. The bedrock of this multilayered story, told in turns by Kate, Sparkes, and Alex O'Conner, is a tense, character-driven exploration of expectations and independence. Strongly recommended for fans of international crime fiction.--Christine Tran Copyright 2018 Booklist

When two girls traveling in Thailand turn up dead in a suspicious fire, journalist Kate Waters follows the story without disclosing a hidden agenda.Kate's son, a former golden boy, dropped out of school and traveled to Thailand two years prior, and he's been in sporadic touch since. Coincidentally, it turns out that he was present at the same guesthouse on the night the girls died. Sidelined because of her conflict of interest, Kate continues to investigate, as does DI Bob Sparkes, a compassionate policeman distracted by the impending death of his wife. Which leads one to wonder: When did all thriller writers begin to fashion themselves as psychologists? There's a dead giveaway to any possible plot twista character whose face or eyes is described as "blank." In Barton's (The Child, 2017, etc.) book, to be fair, it takes almost 300 pages to reach this moment, and up until that point, she creates quite a bit of narrative interest by giving voice to the victims in addition to the many people involved in the investigationdriven reporters, bereaved parents, and very human policemen. But once the killer is clearly outed, even though it takes another 100 pages for all the pieces to fall into place, the novel quickly loses steam. Even a final moral conundrum that should immediately freeze the blood of any parent seems overly constructed rather than shocking. By that point, it had become tiresome reading about most of the characters and their shifty relationships to the truth. "No one is to be believed ever," seems to be a major takeaway. Oh, and P.S., don't let your kids run wild in Thailand.This has the potential to be a thoughtful thriller with an interesting setting, but Barton is too willing to cater to expectationsshort chapters, familiar clues, and stereotypical villains. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Crack journalist Kate Waters prides herself on getting great stories. When two 18-year-old girls disappear on a trip to Thailand, Kate pounces on an interview with the ­parents. But her own son Jake has also been in Thailand, on a time-out from university, and she's heard little from him for two years. Kate wonders if she should get involved in the case, and if she can keep journalistic distance from a story hitting so close to home. What will she do if she learns the truth? This is every parent's worst nightmare. VERDICT Barton (The Widow; The Child) is a stunning storyteller. Her career as a journalist has helped make this story terrifyingly real. Every turn of the plot feels authentic and very scary, as the central character is torn between being a parent and a successful professional. [See Prepub Alert, 8/10/18.]-Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge ­Island, WA © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Lady Elizabeth, Shardlake's royal patron and the future queen, sends him to Norwich to investigate a delicate matter: A distant relative named Edith Boleyn has been murdered in a very obscene fashion and her husband is expected to hang for the crime. "The family name, the foul details of the crime - the pamphleteers will have the time of their lives," predicts a member of the court. Shardlake's orders are to ensure that justice is done. And if it isn't, he has Elizabeth's royal pardon in his pocket. Shardlake participates in a tense murder trial and visits a hellish prison where the condemned await execution - by hanging if they're lucky, by bloodier methods if they're not. And then he lingers in the countryside, struck by the rumbling unrest between displaced peasants and greedy landowners grabbing tracts of common land. Šansom describes 16th-century events in the crisply realistic style of someone watching them transpire right outside his window. He takes a good bit of his plot from the historical peasants' rebellion led by Robert Kett, who appears here as a roguishly romantic hero. The descriptions of Kett's great camp on Mousehold Heath are so vivid you can almost smell the sheep being roasted to feed the thousands of farmers and laborers who make up the rebel army. The historical detail is impressive, but what we remember best are the violent scenes of rioting farmers tearing down the loathed enclosures and the ugly glimpses of women and children being turned out of their homes. Don't believe those tapestries of pretty lords and ladies happily hunting unicorns: The Middle Ages were murder. An autumnal air of melancholy seems to hang over Charles Todd's elegant police procedurals featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard. As THE BLACK ASCOT (Morrow, $26.99) begins, Edward VII has just died and the fashionable socialites attending the 1910 Ascot races are shrouded in mourning. Alan Barrington uses the occasion to arrange a fatal motorcar accident for the man who drove his best friend to commit suicide, or so he believes. Barrington then disappears for nearly 10 years. When he finally resurfaces, Rutledge is sent to discreetly track him down. This reflective series always seems eager to get Todd's sensitive detective out of London and into the English countryside, where the reverberations of World War I are still being felt. In Merwyn, "a gray, bleak village" of lost souls, he finds a wife who thought she was a war widow and her veteran husband, who feels he might as well be dead. And in Hampshire, Rutledge visits a clinic where, staring at shellshocked victims, he sees his own traumatized face. By now I should know better than to continue reading a novel that opens with a telephone call in the middle of the night. It's usually a tipoff that the dialogue is going to be dreary. ("Hello.... Who is this? ... Hello. Hello.... Who is this?") Fiona Barton has written better books than the suspect (Berkley, $26), and I expect to read more of them in the future. But this one recycles familiar themes and old plot points. Kate Waters, a British journalist with amazing survival skills in a weakened industry, takes an assignment involving two teenage girls who have gone missing in Thailand. Since her own son, Jake, is roaming the world and rarely calls home, this case is bound to be a heartbreaker for her and a strain for any reader who doesn't want to plow through another weepy story about suffering mothers and their callous children. But it's my own fault. After all, I caught that middle-of-the-night phone call and I didn't hang up. Here's one for the Shooting Yourself in the Foot Department: THE MURDER PIT (Mira, paper, $15.99), a Victorian potboiler by Mick Finlay, who had the very good idea of spoofing Sherlock Holmes by creating a private investigator who is his exact opposite. Unlike that famed cerebral sleuth, William Arrowood is the detective of last resort, relying on instinct, impulse and sudden brainstorms to resolve distasteful cases for unsavory clients. Norman Barnett, Arrowood's faithful assistant and the narrator of this story, doesn't waste his breath describing bucolic country scenes. And if he and Arrowood should leave London, they're more likely to visit a working farm "with its attack dogs, its slaughter shed, its mountains of stinking dung." Arrowood shows real skill in dealing with the case of Birdie Barclay, who hasn't been heard from since she left home to marry a pig farmer. But Finlay has no sense of proportion. It's not enough that his hero is rude, crude and lacking in social skills. His personal hygiene is so appalling he's unable to eat or drink without soiling himself, so he pretty much smells like a barnyard. Here, have a napkin! MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Fleet Street star Kate Waters's reporting has helped British police crack some extremely disturbing cases, but she faces what could be her toughest one yet in bestseller Barton's top-shelf third psychological thriller (after 2017's The Child). When the parents of 18-year-old Alexandra O'Connor, who's backpacking in Thailand with an 18-year-old female friend, fail to hear from Alex after a week, they alert the police. Kate's longtime police source, Det. Insp. Bob Sparkes, tells her about the two missing teenage girls, in the hope that Kate will write a story that "might winkle them out of whichever bar they're sitting in." Kate keenly identifies with the concerned parents, since her estranged older son, Jake, has been in Thailand for the past two years after inexplicably dropping out of university. But what starts as a routine story soon proves otherwise, sending Kate and her journalistic frenemies to Thailand in search of answers. The exceedingly twisty tale that follows will test Kate, and her painfully conflicting loyalties, to the limit. Barton's many fans will be rewarded. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary (U.K.). (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.