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The Vanishing Point, by Val McDermid
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“[McDermid’s] work is taut, psychologically complex and so gripping that it puts your life on hold.”—The Times (UK)
“Masterfully handled, and McDermid’s ability to wrong-foot the reader remains second to none: highly recommended.”—The Guardian (UK)
From one of the finest crime writers we have, The Vanishing Point kicks off with a nightmare scenario—the abduction of a child in an international airport. Stephanie Harker is in the screening booth at airport security, separated from Jimmy Higgins, the five-year-old boy she’s in the process of adopting, when a man in a TSA uniform leads the boy away. The more Stephanie sounds the alarm, the more the security agents suspect her, and the further away the kidnapper gets. It soon becomes clear nothing in this situation is clear cut. For starters, Jimmy’s birth mother was a celebrity—living in a world where conspiracy and obfuscation are excused for the sake of column inches. And then there are the bad boys in both women’s pasts. As FBI agent Vivian McKuras and Scotland Yard Detective Nick Nikolaides investigate on both sides of the pond, Stephanie learns just how deep a parent’s fear can reach. And the horrifying reality is that she has good reason to be afraid—for reasons she never saw coming.
“The Vanishing Point . . . is marked by [McDermid’s] trademark stunners, including a climax that packs a vicious punch. And readers are again left to marvel at her ingenuity.”—Jay Strafford, Richmond Times-Dispatch
“McDermid knows crime, but more importantly, she knows the dark side of men and women and the havoc they can wreak on each other’s lives. . . . The Vanishing Point is a stand-alone and does it ever. . . . Th[e] opening is shocking, edge-of-your-seat unnerving and violent on different levels. The reader is immediately drawn in by Harker’s overwhelming panic and fear. It’s taut, smart, vivid writing.”—Victoria Brownworth, Lambda Literary (online)
- Sales Rank: #329909 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-10-02
- Released on: 2012-10-09
- Format: Kindle eBook
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Unfocused and predictable
By J. Fuchs
I've always been a big Val McDermid fan. Normally she creates compelling characters and stories that make you want to keep reading despite her clunky prose, especially when she gets into the head of truly creepy psychopaths. In The Vanishing Point, however, the characters never feel like more than stereotypes (the d.j. "playah" from an Indian family, the smarter than she appears reality contestant, the hunky cop, the whip-smart journalist, the possessive musician, the smart foreign housekeeper).
Worse, the book isn't sure what it wants to be -- a mystery, an examination of reality show fame, or an argument against domestic violence. The three strands never really come together. In form, the book starts out as a mystery, with the kidnapping of a child at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, in a scene that's never really convincing. At first, the kidnapping seems to be merely a framing device for the woman the child is taken from, who's been raising the child since the death of his reality t.v. contestant mother. I knew the story was in trouble the moment the narrator, a ghost writer named Stephanie, opens her description of the FBI agent questioning her with the line "a lazy writer would have made something of..." Is McDermid telling us she's a lazy writer? Given how often she repeats the same word from one line to the next and uses the same expression multiple times within a few pages, I had to conclude that McDermid spent a lot of time working out the plot but very little on the actual writing.
The biggest problem with the book for me, however, was that the resolution of the mystery was obvious less than halfway through, and the writing and characters weren't strong enough to carry me to the end with any degree of interest after I'd figured it out.
I was excited to read new Val McDermid, but if this had been my first book of hers it probably would have been my last. She can do so much better.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Different
By Harley
You can look at this two ways. On the one hand as McDermid's books go this is out of character and some, probably all, of the negative reviews on here have very valid points. On the other hand, I think it is an enjoyable crime thriller in its own right. The story is told mostly in flashback with the rather artificial setup of interview by the FBI. The kidnap itself is well handled, you can feel Steph's frustration. Most of this book is the tale of a reality celebrity, based pretty much on Jade Goody's life story from what I can see. In a way the abduction becomes irrelevent for much of it. Steph's stalker ex boyfriend also gets a lot of attention. Where the book enters fantasy land is Part 3 which feels a bit like it's tacked on. Having meandered though the story at leisure, suddenly the pace picks up and Nick and Steph race around trying to save Jimmy. The ending comes abruptly, and for me with some bemusement. Whilst for me, unlike for others reviewing, the ending was a surprise, it did not satisfy. I know the Steph character was bland but I did not expect her to do what she did. In some ways this book suffers from multiple personalities - a chick lit crime story for the beach and the old style penny dreadful stories with the completely bizzarre plots and plastic characters. Some may wonder at the 4 stars now! In grading I go with the gut. Did I enjoy this? Yes. Was it worth the money? Yes. Did the author manage to keep me engaged? Yes. Would I read it again? No. So 4 not 5. In fact this quite simply does not feel like a McDermid book at all. As generally I review books in isolation given that I read so many and can never remember who wrote what else, whether or not this is better or worse than her other stuff has not been factored into my opinion here.I see from other comments she is responsible for Tony Hill. As I find the estimable Dr Hill really irritating that's all to the good as far as I am concerned. However if you enjoy those then this may not be for you as it's neither as dark nor as well done.
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Great thriller with twists & suspense, but an unsatisfactory ending
By Carol S.
I've found some of Val McDermid's past books to be really dark, and to my surprise, "The Vanishing Point" didn't have a grim, super-creepy tone. The book begins with a kidnapping: the adopted son of main character Stephanie Harker is whisked away from under her nose as she waits for a security pat-down at an American airport. For any parent, this kind of scenario, where an ordinary, even tedious scene from everyday life turns, in an instant, into one's worst nightmare, is gripping and ratchets up the tension. But the book next adopts an almost chatty tone, as Stephanie tells her life story--in copious detail--to a sympathetic FBI agent. We learn that Stephanie is a ghost writer, and her most famous client a reality-tv star named Scarlett Higgins. Stephanie walks us through how she met Scarlett; agreed to ghost-write a book for her; and became, to both her and Scarlett's surprise, a very close friend of the celebrity. Scarlett is diagnosed with breast cancer, and her illness brings the two women closer together. So close, in fact, that Scarlett asks Stephanie to act as her son's guardian should she succumb to her illness. Interspersed with Stephanie's recollections are scenes from the present-day, in which the FBI agent and a British detective try to figure out who took five-year-old Jimmy and why.
McDermid does a pretty good job of switching back and forth from Stephanie's detailed, soapy memories to terse scenes in which law enforcement tries to track the kidnapper(s). She creates some interesting characters, including the flashy Scarlett who achieves fame on a reality TV show similar to Survivor; her dapper agent George; Scarlett's cousin, Leanne; although others (in particular, the detective Nick Nicolaides, Stephanie's love interest) fall flat. The story is entertaining and there are several plot twists that I didn't see coming. The book is on the long side, but given the depth with which it delves into Stephanie and Scarlett's backstory, it probably needed to be long to get in all the detail. I especially enjoyed seeing how Stephanie and Scarlett's friendship develops and the rapport that grows between the two.
While entertaining enough, I have a few criticisms. First, there is a somewhat disjointed aspect about the book. This may be due to the fact that there are several major plotlines -- the kidnapping, Scarlett's backstory, Stephanie's relationship with an abusive boyfriend, Scarlett's relationship with her husband, Stephanie's love affair with the detective Nick -- and multiple themes -- domestic violence, the cult of celebrity, friendship between unlikely people, and so on. To some extent, these varied themes and plotlines don't mesh satisfactorily. Detective Nick seems like something of an afterthought, and the last portion of the book, in particular, where Stephanie and Nick go off looking for the kidnapper, seem contrived and out-of-step with the majority of the book. Likewise, the domestic-abuse plotline is developed throughout the book, then dropped abruptly at the end. It may well be that McDermid simply threw an unmanageable number of balls up in the air and so some are bound to fall but it did, I think, undercut the overall appeal of the book.
Without spoiling any of the novel's plot twists for the reader, it has to be said that there are some pretty hard-to-believe things happening in the book, things that defy crediblity. In particular, the ending, though unexpected, is too hard to swallow and the action cuts off very abruptly with regard to several characters. I don't want to say more for fear of spoiling the suspense, but one gets the sense the author just got tired of the whole book, and rushed through the ending; or was trying so hard to not give away a plot development that she engaged in too much misdirection.
All in all, though, "The Vanishing Point" was suspenseful for the most part, with unexpected plot developments, and I enjoyed reading it, even if the ending didn't quite satisfy. If you're already of fan of McDermid's writing, you'll want to give it a go, albeit with the understanding that the book reads quite a bit different from her more well-known Jordan/Hill series.
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