The Child Author Fiona Barton Shares Her Favorite Cold-Case Mysteries

Last year Fiona Barton told a tangled tale in The Widow, centered on long-suffering housewife Jean, her recently deceased husband, and the kidnapping he was accused of years before his death. Her latest thriller, The Child, out this June, sees the revival of another cold case when a journalist finds herself bound to chase the mystery of a baby’s skeleton found in the remains of a demolished house, to its roots.
Barton is, unsurprisingly, a fan of the cold-case mystery in her reading as well. Here she shares with us some of her favorites, perfect creepy reading for cool summer nights.
The righting of historic wrongs has chimed with something fundamental in me since I was a young reader. I love the forensic skills, the psychological insights, and the sheer bloody-mindedness of various detectives—professional or accidental—inching toward the truth of a long-buried secret. It will be no surprise, then, that I have gone down this route in my second novel, The Child, in which the discovery of a newborn’s skeleton sets in motion an investigation by journalist Kate Waters into the identity of the nameless child. I am following tentatively in the footsteps of some of the greats in the genre, starting with Agatha Christie, the queen of the uncovered clue, and finishing with my current read, Val McDermid’s latest starring her cold case detective, DCI Karen Pirie. Some of my choices for this list are hardboiled crime, some literary, some old, some new, but all held me spellbound.

Five Little Pigs, by Agatha Christie
This is often described as Christie’s neglected masterpiece and pitches Hercule Poirot into a 16-year-old-murder (with hemlock), a possible miscarriage of justice, and a convoluted family feud. So far, so what? But it’s not so much the plot in this novel that enthralls, it’s the way Christie presents the riddle of the murder from five different viewpoints. Her Belgian detective asks the five key suspects to write him a letter describing what they heard and saw on the day of the murder and sets out to solve the crime without visiting the scene. Elegantly resolved and an immensely satisfying ending.

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson 
This is the novel that introduced me to Jackson Brodie, Atkinson’s troubled private investigator (are there any other kind?). As the title suggests, he deals with more than one cold case—there are three family tragedies, including the disappearance of a child from a tent in a back garden thirty years earlier, an axe murder by a new mother, and the stabbing to death of a solicitor’s daughter. Now, don’t say you are not getting good value… The stories intertwine expertly and unexpectedly, leaving you desperate to read the next one.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
This astonishing debut, published posthumously, was a fairly nuclear introduction to Scandi Noir. The story centers around the dysfunctional Vanger family and the unsolved disappearance of a young relative in 1966. The hunt for the truth is led by a journalist and the anarchic hacker Lisbeth Salander. The story is gritty, sometimes unbearably graphic, but swept me through its 463 pages to the awful, shuddering denouement.

The Dry, by Jane Harper 
The secrets of small towns have fascinated writers and readers since the first psychological thriller was penned. (Wikipedia tells me that was in 11th-century Japan, and who am I to argue?) Jane Harper has set her cold-case mystery in the worst drought in Australia in a century, teasing us with the irony of temperatures. Her Federal Agent Aaron Falk goes home for the first time in decades for the funeral of a boyhood friend. The friend is said to have committed suicide after murdering his wife and young son in horrifying circumstances, but all may not be as it seems, and Falk reluctantly becomes embroiled in reinvestigating the crime. Meanwhile, a much older crime that touches the investigator intimately is exposed as a rich seam of lies and collusion that underpin the community.

The Little Friend, by Donna Tartt 
Donna Tartt is a genius. This, her second novel, sets a 12-year-old heroine to solve the death of her brother, found beneath a tupelo tree on Mother’s Day when she was still a toddler. The 11-page prologue is a masterclass of building and sustaining unbearable tension before we are plunged into the mind of Harriet, the child determined to find nine-year-old Robin’s killer. It is complex, sublime, and has stayed with me. I am rushing to read it again.

Out of Bounds, by Val McDermid 
The latest outing for DCI Karen Pirie, head of Police Scotland’s Historic Case Unit, is my current book on the bedside table. The danger with having a known character who only deals with cold cases is that there may be nothing new to add to the genre, but McDermid is surprising me page by page. This time, the detective has to revisit a 20-year-old rape and murder after a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and a routine DNA test links him to an unsolved crime. Fab twists and turns and am learning new Scottish words all the time…

The Remorseful Day, by Colin Dexter
Having lived for many years in Oxford, for me the last Inspector Morse novel is a must. I had been part of the backdrop to the Morse series for 25 years (my daughter was actually an extra in one episode of the TV version), and I grew to love the curmudgeonly copper and his long-suffering sidekick, Lewis. The duo are normally part of live investigations, but in this book they consider a cold case, which may or may not have personal connections for Morse. It is a wonderfully intricate valedictory for a brilliant character.

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier 
I refuse to apologize for including this classic thriller in every literary Top Ten I’ve put together. It was in my Top Novels with Marriages with Secrets, the list of books that have influenced me most, and Best First Lines. It is a masterpiece with an unsolved murder at its heart, a second wife, and the scariest housekeeper ever created. What’s not to like?
Fiona Barton’s The Child hits shelves June 27, and is available for pre-order now.