The Vanishing Point

Paperback, 416 pages

Published Sept. 10, 2013 by Grove Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-8021-2176-9

No rating (1 review)

Young Jimmy Higgins is snatched from an airport security checkpoint while his guardian watches helplessly from the glass inspection box. But this is no ordinary abduction, as Jimmy is no ordinary child. His mother was Scarlett, a reality TV star who, dying of cancer and alienated from her unreliable family, entrusted the boy to the person she believed best able to give him a happy, stable life: her ghost writer, Stephanie Harker. Assisting the FBI in their attempt to recover the missing boy, Stephanie reaches into the past to uncover the motive for the abduction. Has Jimmy been taken by his own relatives? Is Stephanie's obsessive ex-lover trying to teach her a lesson? Has one of Scarlett's stalkers come back to haunt them all?

2 editions

barbara fister reviewed The Vanishing Point by Val McDermid

Review of 'The Vanishing Point' on 'LibraryThing'

No rating

Very engaging book with an ending that was truly surprising to me, as used to twists as I am. The protaganoist is a ghost - a ghost writer who is very good at drawing out celebrities so that she can create a book that represents the persona they want to provide to the world. At the beginning of the book, she's getting patted down at O'Hare on route from the UK to California with a young child. She watches in horror as a man in a TSA uniform talks to the boy and leads him away. She can't convince the TSA officers that she's not a terrorist, she's in a panic that her boy has been kidnapped. Not the best advertisement for the TSA, but a great opening. returnreturnWe learn how she came to be the boy's guardian, after writing a ghosted autobiography of a shrewd woman from Leeds who …

Very engaging book with an ending that was truly surprising to me, as used to twists as I am. The protaganoist is a ghost - a ghost writer who is very good at drawing out celebrities so that she can create a book that represents the persona they want to provide to the world. At the beginning of the book, she's getting patted down at O'Hare on route from the UK to California with a young child. She watches in horror as a man in a TSA uniform talks to the boy and leads him away. She can't convince the TSA officers that she's not a terrorist, she's in a panic that her boy has been kidnapped. Not the best advertisement for the TSA, but a great opening. returnreturnWe learn how she came to be the boy's guardian, after writing a ghosted autobiography of a shrewd woman from Leeds who made her name portraying an idiot on a reality TV show. As Stephanie gets to know her subject, they become friends, and she realizes both how tough the woman is and how much her celebrity, which has brought her wealth, has also imprisoned her. Stephanie has a prison warder of her own, a possessive and abusive boyfriend who resents their friendship. Working out how these relationships led to a kidnapping in Chicago and whether the boy will be found is quite an engrossing story that has some interesting things to say about what happens to people who strive for celebrity and become public property.