"[A] stunning debut. Schaffhausen devises a clever storyline, complete with an ingenious pattern, a skillful piece of misdirection and a conclusion that simultaneously troubles and satisfies." —The Richmond-Times Dispatch
"A gripping and powerful read. It is what we call an edge-of-your-seat, rollercoaster of a thriller. You will not be able to put it down before you finish it."—The Washington Book Review
"Poignant and gripping...Schaffhausen keeps the fresh plot of The Vanishing Season churning without resorting to cliches. Believable and flawed characters enhance the realistic twists, down to the denouement. Ellery should be able to support a long-running series.—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“The Vanishing Season won the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Novel Competition. Given the precise prose, the suspenseful plot and the emotionally tortured characters, to say nothing of an irresistible basset hound named Bump, it’s easy to see why.”—Associated Press
“Crime fanatics and mystery lovers will love this story. Schaffhausen really nails the genre and the character development beautifully.”—Huffington Post
"Powerful...the complex plot and affecting characters—especially gritty survivor Ellie and her basset hound, Bump—make for some nail-bitingly tense thrills." —Publishers Weekly
"Schaffhausen’s debut is a fantastic, convoluted thriller that will have her audience on the edge of their seats, taking notes to catch every crumb of a clue. Ellery and Reed, her protagonists, are complex yet brilliantly believable, competent yet very imperfectly human.The villain is both evil and cunning. The storytelling is exceptional and the dialogue is powerful. This chilling tale will have readers guessing till the end! This one is sure to end upon the bestseller list." —RT Book Reviews
“Joanna Schaffhausen’s The Vanishing Season is a gripping debut with a plot twist readers won’t see coming. The main character, Ellery Hathaway, is a survivor whose grace, intelligence, and grit reminded me of Clarice Starling.”—HALLIE EPHRON, author of Night Night, Sleep Tight
"Dark, disturbing, and relentlessly sinister—this intense thriller plumbs the darkest corners of terror, survival and psychological damage. Be warned: leave on the light! But start reading right now."—HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN
"The Vanishing Season introduces small-town police detective Ellery Hathaway, a former child victim of an infamous sadistic psychopath. While attempting to hide the scars of past trauma, Ellery must hunt a terrifying serial killer whose methods eerily echo her former abuser’s. Is she next on his list? Schaffhausen does equal justice to Ellery’s inner and outer struggles as she keeps the plot twists coming in this gripping, compulsively readable debut. Be prepared to lose sleep."—ELISABETH ELO, author of North of Boston
"A twisted story with an unforgettable protagonist and a drop-book-in-lap, sneaky twist that will make you say WOW!"—SHANNON KIRK, author of Method 15/33
2017-09-03
The survivor of a childhood kidnapping investigates a series of missing persons who may be tied to her own history.Inspired by her traumatic past as the victim of a kidnapping, Abby Hathaway, who now goes by her middle name, Ellery, serves as a member of Massachusetts' Woodbury Police Department in an effort to protect others. But a string of missing persons incidents in her jurisdiction has Ellery worried that she's not as able to protect her fellow citizens as much she would like. Bea Nesbit, Mark Roy, and Shannon Blessing could just be a string of runaways, but to Ellery it seems obvious that their disappearances are signs of something much worse. Ellery's insight into the riddle may be tied to the cards she gets in the mail from someone who appears to know secrets of her past she's tried very hard to hide. Not sure what to do, Ellery contacts Reed Markham, the FBI agent who cracked the case Ellery was once at the heart of and rescued her from sadistic Francis Coben, who was almost certainly going to kill her. Reed has been more fixated on his work than his family, causing no good for either, so he welcomes Ellery's help on an informal basis. He shares her fear that the disappearances may be following Coben's original pattern and her conviction that they need to act soon before someone else vanishes. The biggest obstacle in their investigation is Markham's suspicion that Ellery may be not just an investigator, but a suspect, but this idea isn't given enough weight to intensify the suspense. Though it reads more like a dabbling in the genre than a fully realized thriller, Schaffhausen's debut gives evidence that she may develop into an author more in control of readers' emotional attention in future work.
