Fiona Barton series #1: Journalist Kate Waters

Fiona Barton is a British author who started her writing career as a journalist, covering notorious crimes and trials for a bunch of daily newspapers. She has penned two series, one featuring journalist, Kate Waters, and the other featuring Detective Elise King. I'd rate Barton as a solid thriller writer, not at the top of my list of writers of the genre, but still worth the read.

This post reviews the three Kate Waters books: The widow (2016), The child (2017) and The suspect (2019). All books feature Kate Waters digging around for a story that results in the uncovering of a crime. You can see Barton's experience as a crime journalist played out in the explanations of how reporting works.

Kate Waters series | Published 2016, 2017 and 2019

The widow is less of a thriller and more of a character study but it doesn't do a great job of either. In that book, Jean's despicable husband dies and we know from the outset that He Did a Bad Thing. He was a domineering husband and Jean covered up for him. There's no big plot twist, just a story of how Jean's husband's past crimes are revealed and how she finally acknowledges his manipulation of her.

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The child is more complex, where Kate works to uncover a past crime when an old house is demolished in a gentrifying part of London. The story is an intriguing interweaving of past and present - the unsolved case of a baby snatched from a maternity ward many years before and a young woman finding her birth mother. The child is my favourite Kate Waters story.

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The suspect involves Kate's family this time, as her son finds himself in trouble when two girls on a gap year adventure in Thailand go missing. Kate starts off investigating the story then gets personally involved when she travels to Thailand to pursue the story and reconnect with her son. Barton explores the theme of the lengths a parent might go to to protect their child. There was enough suspense for me in this one to keep me invested to the end.

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While I don't rate the Kate Waters series at the top of my list of thrillers, they are still worth the read. Barton is an accomplished storyteller and there is enough complexity, with perhaps the exception of The widow, to make for an interesting reading experience.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐