On medical leave in her coastal English village, Det. Mace" Reid She's back in action when two teenagers overdose at a big, splashy music festival sponsored by a newcomer and a townsman subsequently disappears. Following the LJ-starred The Widow.

The disappearance of a well-liked pensioner places all the other problems of the aspiring resort town of Ebbing in an unsettling new context. Charlie Perry, whose ex-model wife, Pauline, talked him into buying the money pit Tall Trees, is worried because his expenses have left him deeply in debt to Wadham Manor, the posh care home where his daughter, Birdie Nightingale, has been housed ever since a botched burglary left her boyfriend dead and her blind and brain-damaged. Housecleaner Dee Eastwood is grieving the loss of her elder brother, Phil Golding, who was found dead in a park three weeks ago. Dave Harman, landlord of the Neptune pub, is angry that newcomer Pete Diamond is sponsoring a music festival that will bring all manner of riffraff into the quiet town. DI Elise King, still on sick leave after her cancer surgery, wonders when she'll feel herself again. All these troubles get shunted aside when Pauline reports that Charlie's gone missing. By the time Elise finds him dead, she's already accepted retired librarian Ronnie Durrant's invitation to poke around a little. Given what Elise has already discovered, it makes perfect sense for DCI Graham McBride to call her back to the Major Crime Team ahead of schedule and to appoint her senior investigating officer when DI Hugh Ward, the long-term live-in who dumped her, goes on sick leave after he's dumped in turn by his fiancee. Barton presents such an embarrassment of riches that the tale has almost run its course before the coppers have a chance to sit down with Stuart Bennett, the just-freed burglar who attacked Birdie. Layers and layers of unlovely revelations about people who seemed perfectly nice. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In the prologue of this suspenseful crime novel from bestseller Barton (The Widow), set in the small British seaside community of Ebbing, an unidentified man strains to spit out the gag in his mouth just as someone enters the room where he's being held. In the main narrative, cleaning woman Dee Eastwood, whose clientele includes 73-year-old Charlie Perry and his "some years" younger wife, Pauline, arrives one morning at the Perrys' caravan and discovers Charlie is missing. Pauline later admits she hadn't noticed his absence until Dee woke her. Flash back 17 days to Charlie's visit to his brain-damaged daughter, Birdie, in a residential care facility. Birdie's injuries were ostensibly caused by a drug addict who tortured her 20 years earlier during a burglary to get her to reveal where her valuables were. Another flashback introduces Det. Insp. Elise King, who also employs Dee. When Elise returns to active duty after being treated for breast cancer, she's assigned to the search for Charlie, an inquiry that reveals multiple secrets about him, including why he lied about the real cause of Birdie's injuries. Barton's facility at creating plausible characters makes emotional involvement with them easy. Minette Walters fans will be pleased. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary (U.K.). (June)

On leave after surgery, DI Elise King hopes to settle into her new seaside home in Ebbing, but, when her neighbor, Ronnie, pops in with the news that Ebbing's most beloved septuagenarian, Charlie Perry, has gone missing, Elise feels her dormant curiosity stirring. Ebbing has just hosted a controversial music festival that ended with the overdose of two locals, and now there's a missing person? Ronnie easily persuades Elise that an off-the-books investigation is their neighborly duty, and they unearth a host of leads. Charlie's unfaithful wife, Pauline, seems to be more inconvenienced than concerned by his disappearance. And, before leaving London, charming Charlie took Pauline's surname to hide his history of Ponzi schemes and connection to a suspicious robbery that left his daughter with a debilitating brain injury. Barton skillfully pivots here from the globe-trotting reporting that drives her Kate Waters series toward domestic crime awash in village secrets. Readers drawn in by Elise's hawk-eyed detecting and hard-edged vulnerability won't see the final twist coming.