TheWell Bookshop

Series · mystery

Kate Waters

by Fiona Barton

The Kate Waters series by Fiona Barton has 3 known books (3 published) and is best read in publication order, starting with The Widow (2016).

Books
3 known books (3 novels)
Published
3
First published
2016
Status
completed
Shelved under
Mystery & Crime
Last checked

Start here: The Widow (2016) — then read straight through in publication order.

Book one

Cover of The Widow

The Widow (2016)

Reading order

The date order of published books and any announced future entries — the default way to read the series.

  1. The Widow

    Novel

    The Widow, published in 2016, opens Fiona Barton's Kate Waters trilogy at 324 pages, following the veteran tabloid reporter as she works the wife of a suspected child abductor after his sudden death.

    View book

  2. The Child

    Novel

    The Child came a year later in 2017, its longest entry at 433 pages, sending Kate to reconstruct a decades-old infant death exhumed by a building-site discovery.

    View book

  3. The Suspect

    Novel

    The Suspect closed the trilogy in 2019 at 416 pages, taking Kate to Thailand to investigate two missing British teenagers in a case that turns personal.

    View book

About the Kate Waters series

Kate Waters is a veteran British tabloid reporter, built from Fiona Barton's own decades on Fleet Street -- senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, chief reporter at the Mail on Sunday. Across three novels, Kate works the human side of major crime stories: talking her way past police lines, coaxing confessions out of grieving or guilty families, and reconstructing the truth from whatever a case's various witnesses are each willing to admit. The Widow follows the wife of a suspected child abductor after his sudden death; The Child traces a decades-old infant death exhumed by a building-site discovery; The Suspect sends Kate to Thailand after two British teenagers go missing -- a case that turns painfully personal for her.

Barton structures each novel around competing first-person perspectives -- reporter, suspect, victim's family, police -- rather than a single detective's view, using her own journalism background to dramatize how a news story's official version and its buried truth rarely match.

Frequently asked questions

How many Kate Waters books are there?

Three: The Widow (2016), The Child (2017), and The Suspect (2019).

Is Kate Waters a detective?

No, she's a veteran newspaper reporter, closely modeled on Fiona Barton's own career at the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, and Mail on Sunday.

Is the Kate Waters series finished?

Barton has not published a fourth Kate Waters novel since The Suspect (2019); she moved on to the separate Elise King series in 2022.

Reading order last verified .