Brutality of vanity

The Vanishing Point

By Val McDermid, Little, Brown, 448 pages, £16.99

For me, the best literature is the kind that makes you look at something afresh or has a plot line that goes in a totally different direction from what you would expect. With the holiday season coming, if you want a knockout, easy read with a good dose of gripping suspense, anticipation and many twists and turns, then look no further than Val McDermid’s “The Vanishing Point” — it ticks all the right boxes for fans of crime thriller.

Written with cinematic clarity, McDermid succeeds in finding new avenues among the well-trodden paths of the crime story. It doesn’t merely deliver all the key elements of terror and unforeseen twists; it also deals with absurd celebrity culture.

What do you expect from a bestselling writer? Even after 25 books, one can sense that there isn’t any slackening of interest or desire to write better on the part of McDermid as she gets under the skin of ruthless show business.

A former journalist and queen of the psychological thriller, McDermid, with artful panache and effortlessness, tackles something much darker and more murderous — the brutality of vanity. The masked psycho is passé; the villain of choice at the moment is a homicidal actress.

Portraying a kneejerk hysteria, the novel begins with Stephanie Harker, who watches helplessly her 5-year-old Jimmy being abducted from Chicago airport. In pursuit of Jimmy’s whereabouts, things become complicated as the authorities try to comprehend Stephanie’s relationship with the boy and her ex-boyfriend Pete Matthews, who is an insidious bully and a stalker.

It is soon decided that the Jimmy’s abduction is likely to have something to do with his precarious past. Feeling like being trapped in a Brothers Grimm tale as Stephanie tells her story to the FBI agent, we learn that Jimmy’s mother is the notorious reality star Scarlett Higgins, who is smarter and shrewder than any TV viewer or tabloid reader would have thought possible, and Stephanie is a professional ghost writer.

Alternating between the present investigation and flashbacks, the book gradually grips you and builds up an atmosphere of fervid suspicion when we know how ambitious Scarlett strikes up an unlikely friendship with Stephanie through her pregnancy, her marriage to junkie DJ Joshu, Jimmy’s birth, Joshu’s death due to drug overdose, her battle with cancer, naming Stephanie as Jimmy’s guardian and finally the shocking denouement.

In “The Vanishing Point”, the reader is always left to wonder what exactly is going on, as the motive for the abduction is uncovered. McDermid makes you care about all her characters but never neglects a plot that is full of her trademark surprises. For her old fans, and new readers like me, “The Vanishing Point” is a criminal treat.