Watch Her Vanish

Watch Her Vanish by Ellery Kane is at least his sixth novel, and this book gripped my interest from the first few pages, and the fascination with this eerie story did not end until the book ran out of pages. The author’s website indicates he is a forensic psychologist during the day, and a novelist at night. If his other books are as good as this one, then he can say goodbye to his day job.

As an indication of the nature of the story to come, the author starts with a quote from Alfred Hitchcock from The Birds. There’s a restaurant in San Francisco called For Harbor, which is the fictional location for Kane’s maximum security prison which is somewhere on northern coast presumably, of California. In the prologue, he introduces as to Bonnie McMillan, the married mother of two boys who works at Crescent Bay State Prison as a creative writing teacher. Her husband has taken their boys whale watching, and he too works at the prison where he manages the GED program. Like so many other employees of the prison, it had never been the intent of Bonnie to stay in Fog Harbor and to work in this remote corner of the state, but sometimes thing work out that way. Bonnie took advantage of the absence of her husband and boys to go to a late showing of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Only, she never made it home, and her body was discovered a few days later. That is the first of several serial murders.

Next, the  reader learns about the sisters Olivia Rockwell and Emily Rockwell. Olivia is the chief psychologist at the prison and Emily works there as a dental hygienist. The story centers around the character Drake Devere who is in prison for murder. But he’s a literate guy, in addition to being a total narcissistic personality disorder and sociopath. Bonnie has helped him with his writing and Olivia is his treating psychologist. Self-referred as the hawk, Devere has penned a book about a man who can slip in and out of a maximum security prison in order to murder women in the neighborhood. The book became a best seller, and Hawk has sent the proceeds of the book to a charity. He has become famous and promised a sequel. The next murder was that of Laura Ricci who was Devere’s work supervisor in the kitchen, although he was often late for his shifts and about to be booted from his job.

The author filled out this story with a rich group of characters including Warden Blevens, Sergeant Wickersham, and Detective Will Decker. The story is quite believable and there were suspenseful surprises right to the end. This book gets a fabulous recommendation from me, and Men Reading Books needs to invest some more time with this author.