“‘You have to remember that monsters don’t look the part, Roni, they’re not marked out in any way. If only.’”

A bunch of busy bodies busy-bodying around a small, UK seaside town. I guess it’s not busy-bodying if you’re an actual police detective on medical leave, but I digress. Usually a sign of mediocrity I’ve found for a book is when I can’t find good/funny supplemental stock photos for my reviews, but I think in the case of Barton’s “Local Gone Missing,” it’s more-so that this was a very specific mystery and I can only Google so many pictures of ecstasy before I get on some kind of watchlist. The misdirection was interesting, the characters we spent the most time with had depth, the reveals caught me off guard, and the mess of it all was satisfying in the end. Really all you want from the Crime Fiction Formula.

Something was definitely “missing” (see what I did there) from the narrative and I think it was the foil of the townies. We didn’t much see the perspective from the tourists the blurb mentions being an integral part of the plot. I think it would have added a lot more conflict to what narrowed down to be a relatively generic crime mystery.

3/5 Got everything I needed but would have liked a bit more oomph.