Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth is my ninth review for the #20booksofsummer24 challenge hosted by Cathy @746books, a reading challenge where participants aim to read and review 20 books during the summer. This book, the ninth in my challenge, is a captivating mystery that I’m excited to share with you.
Accompanying Miss Silver on her 24th case, we are plunged into a riveting mystery- the vanishing of Maggie Bell, a conundrum as complex as it is enigmatic.
Plot synopsis
A year before, Maggie Bell left her parents’ house to visit her cousin, who lived just down the lane. She never arrived at her cousin’s house and was never seen again. A few weeks after her disappearance, a few postcards were sent from London to her elderly parents, reassuring them that she would come home soon, but she never did.
The small town of Dalling Grange is abuzz with concern over Maggie Bell’s disappearance. Local gossip has not ceased speculating on her fate. The police, with no substantial leads, fear the worst. They suspect the disappearance might be linked to an Air Force security breach. Frank Abbott turns to Miss Silver for help in this atmosphere of worry and uncertainty.
As Miss Silver immerses herself in the community of Dalling Grange, staying with her old school friend, she becomes a pivotal figure in the unfolding drama. Her keen observations and insights into the peculiar family dynamics, the plight of two young girls, and the uncovering of a jewel smuggling plot and an air defense ministry leak bring a comforting clarity to the mystery of the two missing women.
The Review
Vanishing Point is a beautifully romantic mystery. The novel opens with Rosamund walking in the woods, taking in a few moments of solace. Rosamund’s life is one of colorless drudgery; she works herself nearly to the bone, cleaning every bit of bric a brac and shining every last piece of Crewe china for her aunt Lydia Crewe, who took in Rosamund and her younger sister Jenny after Jenny was severely injured in a car wreck several years earlier. As punishment for Rosamund’s father not changing his name to Crewe after marrying her mother and to further degrade and punish Rosamund, she is at Lydia’s beck and call day and night. She cares for her precocious younger sister when she doesn’t tend to Lydia Crewe.
Jenny, who wants to be an author, sends some of her rather amateurish burgeoning prose to a publishing house and editor, Craig Lester, who comes to call on her and give her some advice. Lester meets Rosamund, falls head over heels in love, and sizes up Aunt Lydia’s game. He decides to help Rosamund and Jenny get away from Lydia Crewe.
He decides to stay in the area and visits Jenny often. During one of their visits, over cakes and tea, she regales Lester with the mystery of Hazel Green: Maggie Bell’s disappearance, the two postcards sent after her disappearance, and how the police cannot trace her.
At the same time, Lester makes his way to Hazel Green, and Miis Silver and Frank Abbott also infiltrate the area. Miss Silver is especially interested in Lydia Crewe’s relationship. She watches Lydia cruelly embarrass her friends with delight. When Lydia Crewe’s gormless maid disappears, Miss Silver enlists the help of Craig Lester, and the two of them do a little late-night breaking to spy on Lydia Crewe and what they find might surprise you.
Patricia Wentworth poured a lot of herself into Vanishing Point. There’s a lot of meta-discussion about writing and reading and how to become a successful writer and a writer who writes good stories. She has particular acerbity for the bodice-ripper romances that chiefly make up Jenny’s reading and says a steady diet of classical literature will at least point her in the right direction. One wonders where she believes her romance-laden mysteries would fare on the road to literary greatness.
The romance that opens the novel is a throwback to Victorian morays and the staid hallmark of Disney corporation, complete with the evil aunt who works the heroine like Cinderella. However, the story is not a pure romance-it discusses how lonely women are often prey to other wealthy and domineering women. They can know evil and even gossip about it in their midst but believe they are immune to deadly attacks. Such is the fate of Maggie Bell and others in Vanishing Point. This exploration of the power dynamics between women and the consequences of underestimating threats is a key theme in the book.
Only when the assassin strikes right under Miss Silver’s nose does Miss Silver, who has been relatively unobtrusive in the story so far, spring into action. She breaks into houses, sneaks around, stops a poisoning, and becomes an avenging angel. Fearless and unrestrained by the law, Miss Silver inserts herself in the story in a big way in the latter third of the story and amplifies this domestic romance into a full-blown thriller.
Wentworth grounds this rather dreamy and fantastical tale by underpinning everything with the natural fear of existential air force threat. Set just after World War II, the threat of sudden attack still looms in the British consciousness, and when this sleepy little town is on the edge of a military experimental station, and secrets are being leaked, it taps into a real fear. However, this subplot is underdeveloped- when it is integrated into the story, it is done with much aplomb, and the marketing would have you believe this is the most crucial thread of the story, but it is instead in the background.
In Vanishing Point, Patricia Wentworth returns the curtain on why she writes romantic mysteries and how she can do them well in the Miss Silver series. They are all variations on the same theme: girl and boy get a happy ending, and each is colored by tropes of the romance genre that Wentworth is trying to uphold, subvert, or break. I found Vanishing Point to be a love letter to her younger self and to the romance genre- which is much maligned and often eschewed in mystery fiction as “filler”-is challenged in this story as Wentworth makes the case that romance can be good, and even great fiction.
Beyond the meta-commentary about romance fiction, Wentworth writes a cracking mystery that explicitly tackles the difference between our inner self and the person we project ourselves to be in the world. Some characters like Lydia Crewe present themselves as evil and malicious, but what is at her core? After years of struggle, Rosamund has had her inner self almost extinguished, and it’s finally re-lit by her budding romance with Craig Lester. Several characters are hiding their inner selves, presenting an image that they want others to believe, usually for gain: some, like Jenny-who pretends she still cannot walk and escapes the house at night to go ranging around- are ultimately harmless, if a little thoughtless and cruel to Rosamund, while others harbor great evil or indifference under placid faces. Vanishing Point explores the cruelty some can mask.
Overall, Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth has been one of my favorite reads of 2024 and my favorite read of the 20 books of summer 24 so far. I highly recommend it to Miss Silver fans.
Miss Silver Series Reviews
#20booksofsummer24 Reviews
Golden Age of Detective Fiction 
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