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The Lady Vanished is an impressive character driven thriller

The Lady Vanished

by Gretta Mulroney

Joffe Books

Mystery & Thrillers

Pub Date: December 5, 2015

Description

How can someone vanish without a trace?

Carmen Langborne is a woman who no one seems to like very much, and now she's gone missing. But there is no body, no leads and no real suspects. And the police have stopped investigating her disappearance.

Carmen's stepdaughter Florence hires private detective Tyrone Swift to find the missing woman. If the body is found, Florence will inherit half of a very valuable house. As Swift delves deeper into the family’s affairs, he discovers dark family secrets that threaten the reputations of powerful people. Will Swift get to the truth before those with much to hide stop him?

Find out in this absorbing mystery with many twists and turns, featuring characters with real dilemmas and conflicts. You will not want to put this book down till the surprising and dramatic conclusion.

If you like Robert Galbraith, Angela Marsons, Colin Dexter, Ruth Rendell, or Mark Billingham you will be gripped by this exciting new crime fiction writer.

THE LADY VANISHED is the first in a new series of detective mysteries featuring Tyrone Swift. Tyrone Swift is a former policeman turned private detective. He’s survived a stabbing and his fiancée running off with another man. Swift is unlucky in love but pretty good at getting to the truth. He loves rowing on the river Thames and his ex-fiancée has just come back on the scene.

Review

Dark family secrets lie at the heart of Gretta Mulrooney's new thriller The Lady Vanished. It is not a traditional murder mystery per se. Former Interpol agent now private investigator Tyler Swift is hired by Carmen Langborne's stepdaughter to find out what happened to her. One day, Carmen simply disappeared. The police found no evidence of foul play, and there has been no activity on her credit cards or bank account since her disappearance.

Without a body, Florence and her brother Rupert must wait 7 years before Carmen can be declared dead. For a woman with debts, that is a very long time. As Swift digs, secrets come to light that threaten reputations of powerful individuals.

Tyler Swift is an intelligent investigator, skilled at ferreting out information. He left Interpol after seeing too much of the suffering and abuses endured by victims of the sex trade. While companionable, at heart he is alone. Mulrooney's lead is capable and compassionate. As a reader, it is easy to empathize with him, to follow in his footsteps each step of the way. He wants justice done, but it's tempered with understanding.

The Lady Vanished is character driven, but in many ways it is the peripheral characters who capture the reader. From Swift's lodger Cedric, an elderly man with a zest for life to an abused woman working in a bakery to support her family, to Swift's ex who he still loves, one and all they captivate the reader. As in life, there is not one single line to follow, but many. For me, the people Swift encountered were as important as the mystery he was hired to solve. Like Ruth Rendell, Mulrooney understands human psychology and uses that knowledge well in her writing.

5/5

I received a copy of The Lady Vanished from the publisher and netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

--Crittermom

http://muttcafe.com/2015/12/the-lady-vanished/

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