Vanishing Point

Marcia Muller

7/20/2007

Laurel Greenwood disappeared when her daughters Jennifer and Terry were ten and six. Now, 22 years later, Jennifer hires Sharon McCone to find out what happened to her mother. A few days after her mother's disappearance, her father quit looking. Jennifer doesn't know if her mother died or ran away. Her father recently died from cancer and Jennifer is looking for answers. She is making herself ill with doubt and misery.

Sharon has shocked her friends and family. At the beginning of Vanishing Point, she has come home from Carson City, Nevada, married to her long time lover, Hy Rapinsky. She has avoided committment for so many years that no one expected this move. Now they have to deal with their families and friends - and the congratulations parties. Between the parties and this missing person case, though, she and Hy don't see each other for over a week because of their respective jobs. That's not a way to begin a marriage even if they have been together for years. Besides, Hy mentioned something about moving to a larger home in San Francisco. Sharon doesn't want to give up her cozy place even though what he says makes sense.

As Sharon investigates the Greenwood case, she starts discovering the secrets that were hidden over 20 years earlier. Things were not as they seemed to young Jennifer who remembers her mother clearly after all this time. Roy Greenwood refused to talk about his wife. Their mother's sister cared for the two girls until they were grown, but she is aloof and taciturn, so they still haven't learned anything. Something happened back then that Sharon is determined to discover. Women just don't vanish completely without someone knowing something. She just has to dig in the right places.

Marcia Muller has given a twist to the Sharon McCone story line to maintain the readers' interest in Sharon's life. The mystery is well done mixing the past with the parallels of the present. Twining the two story lines together makes Vanishing Point a good detective novel with a human interest side that can keep any reader pulled in. Every time a layer of the mystery is exposed, two or three more questions are added to the puzzle for one that has been answered. A dead woman comes to life. A motorcyclist disappears. Someone shoots at Sharon in a hotel atrium.

Vanishing Point is an entertaining detective novel that will maintain your interest.

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Edwin of the Iron Shoes
Ask the Cards a Question
The Chesire Cat's Eye
Games to Keep the Dark Away
Leave a Message for Willie
Double
There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of
Eye of the Storm
The Shape of Dread
There's Something in a Sunday
Trophies and Dead Things
Where Echoes Live
Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes
Wolf in the Shadows
Till the Butchers Cut HimDown
A Wild and Lonely Place
The McCone Files
The Broken Promise Land
Both Ends of the Night
While Other People Sleep
A Walk Through the Fire
Listen to the Silence
Dead Midnight
The Dangerous Hour
Vanishing Point
The Ever-Running Man