The Vanishing Point
It is every parent’s worst nightmare. Stephanie Harker is travelling through the security gates at O’Hare airport when she is taken into a perspex box having set off the metal detectors. Made to wait outside, five-year-old Jimmy is led away, by hand, by a uniformed officer. Stephanie’s panic and shouts lead security to believe she is a threat, and she is tasered brutally to the ground amidst her screams of protest while Jimmy disappears into the distance unnoticed by anyone but her.
However, when Stephanie has a chance to tell her story to the FBI, it becomes clear that everything is not as it seems. Unanswered questions surround Jimmy’s background and why someone would want to abduct him. But it is Stephanie’s close friendship with reality TV star Scarlett Higgins that appears to lie at the bottom of a tale of death, deception and the extraordinary lengths to which a parent will go to protect their child.
Publication date UK: 13 September 2012 (Little, Brown Book Group)
Publication date US: 10 September 2013 (Grove Atlantic)
For a list of Translation Publishers: click here
Buy this book
<< Back to all books
Description
Vanishing Point
Kobo in conversation: Author Val McDermid talks with author and journalist Paula Todd about her latest novel The Vanishing Point; plus publicity, celebrity and the future of books.
The Vanishing Point
Series: Stand-alone thriller
- A Place of Execution
(HarperCollins, 1999)
- Christmas is Murder
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2000)
- Killing the Shadows
(HarperCollins, 2001)
- Stranded
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2005)
- The Grave Tattoo
(HarperCollins, 2006)
- Cleanskin
(HarperCollins, 2006)
- Trick of the Dark
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2010)
- My Granny is a Pirate
(Orchard Books, 2012)
- The Vanishing Point
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2012)
- Northanger Abbey
(HarperCollins, 2014)
- Forensics – The Anatomy of Crime
(Profile Books, 2014)
- My Scotland
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2019)
- Imagine a Country
(Canongate Books, 2020)
- Resistance
(Profile Books, 2021)
- Winter
(Hodder Press, 2025)
The Vanishing Point
Series: Stand-alone thriller
UK Publisher: Little, Brown
Literary agent: David Higham Associates
Publication date UK: 13 September 2012
- A Place of Execution
(HarperCollins, 1999)
- Christmas is Murder
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2000)
- Killing the Shadows
(HarperCollins, 2001)
- Stranded
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2005)
- The Grave Tattoo
(HarperCollins, 2006)
- Cleanskin
(HarperCollins, 2006)
- Trick of the Dark
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2010)
- My Granny is a Pirate
(Orchard Books, 2012)
- The Vanishing Point
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2012)
- Northanger Abbey
(HarperCollins, 2014)
- Forensics – The Anatomy of Crime
(Profile Books, 2014)
- My Scotland
(Little, Brown Book Group, 2019)
- Imagine a Country
(Canongate Books, 2020)
- Resistance
(Profile Books, 2021)
- Winter
(Hodder Press, 2025)
Reviews
Reviews
McDermid keeps tension high with red herrings and plot twists. The sheer brio of her writing produces that increasingly rare thing, a genuine page-turner that doesn’t insult its readers’ intelligence. – The Independent On Sunday – Shirley Whiteside
In this intelligent and hypnotically readable thriller, what really interests McDermid, and us, is the meaning of fame and how people deal with being famous. The relationship between Scarlett and Stephanie is one of the best things she has done. True, the double narrative is sometimes cumbersome and a large red herring stinks to high heaven; but these add up to a small price to pay for this entertaining and thought-provoking book. Roll on next autumn. – The Spectator – Andrew Taylor
Held up in airport security, Stephanie watches in horror as the five-year-old boy she’s traveling with is kidnapped. as she unburdens to the FBI, their story begins to unravel and she is caught up in a desperate race to find the boy before it’s too late. – GRIPPING THRILLER — Fanny Blake
