#Titanuary #BookReview ‘The Vanishing Season’ by Joanna Schaffhausen

About the book…

Ellery Hathaway knows a thing or two about serial killers, but not through her police training. She’s an officer in sleepy Woodbury, MA, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number seventeen in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only victim who lived.

When three people disappear from her town in three years, all around her birthday—the day she was kidnapped so long ago—Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous. Her superiors dismiss her concerns, but Ellery knows the vanishing season is coming and anyone could be next. She contacts the one man she knows will believe her: the FBI agent who saved her from a killer’s closet all those years ago.

Agent Reed Markham made his name and fame on the back of the Coben case, but his fortunes have since turned. His marriage is in shambles, his bosses think he’s washed up, and worst of all, he blew a major investigation. When Ellery calls him, he can’t help but wonder: sure, he rescued her, but was she ever truly saved? His greatest triumph is Ellery’s waking nightmare, and now both of them are about to be sucked into the past, back to the case that made them…with a killer who can’t let go.

First published by Titan in 2018, ‘The Vanishing Season’ introduces Joanna’s detective, Ellery Hathaway.

And what an introduction it is!

Her past history of being an infamous serial killer’s victim is really interesting as it throws the police procedural aspect of the novel into sharp focus. Is her motivation to see justice being done? Is it to make sure that no one else suffers like she and her family did? If so, why did she move to a sleepy town where nothing really happens? Except, someone in this place seems to know her personal history, and to date, 3 people have gone missing , or have possibly been murdered.

But in order to explain what seems innoucous to strangers, yet deeply dangerous to her, she would need to reveal her past. For the past three years, a birthday card has been posted to her, and someone has gone missing.

Seemingly unconnected people, all with reasons to vanish, have been written off as simple missing person cases, but Ellery suspects they are dead. Then her birthday approaches, and a card is not what is left this year…

‘The Vanishing Season’ is an exceptional thriller. It takes the serial killer trope and does new things with it- like making the main protagonist the survivor of a childhood trauma so huge most people couldn’t imagine it, and turning her into a police officer. And the detective who found her, Reed Markham, in writing a book about the case, made Ellery’s kidnap, and escape,a part of the journalistic narrative of criminals, thereby making Ellery’s life available to anyone with the price of a book or a cinema ticket in their pocket.

At the point where Reed and Ellery reconnect, Ellery has changed her name, moved away from her childhood home and is taking control over every relationship she is involved in. It’s the only way she can seperate ‘past her’, from ‘now her’, and yet the past keeps creeping in…

Damaged yet strong, flawed yet intensively invested in seeing the right thing done, Ellery and her history makes brutal reading.

Reed, on the other hand, once the golden boy of police enforcement, has messed up his last kidnapping case and is on semi-permanant leave. When Ellery rings with her suspicions, he feels he can redeem himself and believes her in a way that her fellow police officers don’t.

And what’s interesting about Reed is that he is notorious for rescuing Ellery, and how you follow this as a detective investigating missing person cases is next to impossible. The look on the parent’s faces when the solver of the Francis Corben case knocks on their door,that hope that he can pull off the same result-a live retrieval of the missing child/teen/person-dissolves in more cases than Reed can count. As he himself says, the successful outcome is sometimes reduced to the mere finding of bones, and providing closure.

Not every case is solvable. I found this so intriguing as you see this in books and movies all the time, the brilliant detective/rookie/forensic specialist solves a case, happy ever after….but what happens when public notoriety gets involved in the mix? Where the people in the case are ‘known’ to the point that their lives are irreperably changed by the nature of celebrity thrust upon them?

This novel does not give up its secrets easily, you have to pay attention to the details as a picture is painted of a very dangerous person. What I also enjoyed, apart from the nail biting tension, is that the serial killer and Ellery’s background with him, were not immediately gone into, the backstory was slowly revealed for maximum impact as you got to know Ellery’s character. This made the full revelation of what she went through even more traumatic, now that you had gotten to know her, her life with Bumo, her dog, and the town she lives in.

A superb series opener that had me ordering book 2, ‘No Mercy’, before I was even halfway through ‘The Vanishing Season’, this is a book with cliff hanger moments, well rounded characters and a gripping story, Needless to say, I really enjoyed it and recommend it highly! And if you enjoy it, book 3, ‘All The Best Lies’ is out very soon…

About the author…

Joanna Schaffhausen wields a mean scalpel, sharp skills she developed in her years studying neuroscience. She has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brain―how it develops and the many ways it can go wrong. Previously, she worked as a scientific editor in the field of drug development. Prior to that, she was an editorial producer for ABC News, writing for programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives in the Boston area with her husband, daughter, and an obstreperous basset hound.