Fiona Barton is the author of the new novel Talking to Strangers. Her other novels include The Widow. She has also worked as a journalist.
Q: Talking to Strangers is your second novel about your character Detective Inspector Elise King. How do you think she’s changed from one book to the next?
A: Elise is allowing herself to think about her future for the first time since her cancer diagnosis. She tells her family and friends she is perfectly happy on her own but privately, she longs for and is terrified of a new relationship.
It has meant exploring a different vulnerability in her character while she copes with the murder investigation and conceals the wisps of chemo fog that linger in corners of her brain.
Q: What inspired the plot of Talking to Strangers?
A: My mother said never talk to strangers. Drummed it into me. She meant the strangers of nightmares; the evil predators in dirty macs who tempted kids with sweeties or puppies before snatching and murdering them. But we all talk to strangers now that we live online. People become our friends or followers in the click of a button. Or the swipe of a finger.
I became fascinated with the risks involved in online dating when a friend of a friend announced some years ago she had a date with a stranger on Salisbury Plain. “He’s sent me the map co-ordinates,” she said, ignoring he was clearly an axe murderer with a shovel in the boot of his car.
Meeting “The One” was clearly worth the risk. And she got a huge buzz from it.
Many of the women I know are happily doing this – it is the norm now – and some have fallen in love and had fairytale weddings. But not all.
As a writer, I loved the uncertainty, the room for deception, the danger people may put themselves in to find their happy ending.
Q: The Kirkus Review of the book called it a “compelling demonstration of the sad truth that there's no neutral way to conduct a murder investigation. Everybody pays.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love it! Detectives and journalists are traditionally taught to be objective in their work – to stand back and observe - but we are human beings, not robots. And empathy allows us to stand in other people’s shoes; to feel what they feel and better understand them.
Two of my narrators – Detective Inspector Elise King and journalist Kiki Nunn – become personally involved in the murder investigation precisely because they recognise their own loneliness in the victim Karen’s search for love.
Q: Without giving anything away, did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I had an inkling but there were many sleepless nights and hair tearing sessions before I knew for sure. I have only written the ending at the outset once – for my debut, The Widow, but I had years to let it cook in my head before anyone else was aware the book existed.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Book Six is emerging from the miasma in my head and I have started writing and deleting…
Q: Anything else we should know
A: I’m considering having Why doesn’t it get any easier? tattooed on my arm.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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