Compelling, textured thriller in Adirondacks

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	• Vanishing Act Thomas Perry Random House Value Publishing, 1997 average customer review:based on 34 reviews
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highly recommended

A wonderful series!

Vanishing Act is the first in a series of five books about Jane Whitefield, an Indian guide who will take someone from where there are people who want to kill them -- to where they are safe. She provides people with a new identity and a new life. John Felker is looking for just that. He is a former cop turned accountant who is being set up as an embezzler. Someone is skimming money from the accounting firm's customers and depositing it into an account in John's name. There is also an open contract on his life, so he needs to disappear.

The book is written in two distinctly separate parts. The first part is about how Jane makes someone disappear. We follow Jane and John cross country as they are being chased by the men who are after John. We are introduced to people along the way who help make their escape possible by providing safe places to stay or creating fake documentation or getting them transportation. When Jane finally gets John safe, the story takes a new twist. The people we have met along their journey are being murdered. Someone has been tracking them and Jane fears for John's safety. She has to go back to save him before the killers find him too.

The Native American culture and history were very interesting. Jane uses her training and skills in tracking and in creating weapons from items she finds in the woods. I thought of a few questions along the way that I wanted answers to and was a bit disappointed when those answers, found late in the book, would have cleared everything up quite early. Surely Jane is better at this than I am and should have asked them herself. But then we wouldn't have had a story, right?

Armchair Interviews says: Definitely pick Vanishing Act and up the next one in this unique series.

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Thomas Perry does it again

Perry manages to continiue to surprise you in the different ways he has Jane do some very tricky things to keep her friend and herself alive. Jane uses all her innate wisdom and makes use of most of her contacts to make everything turn out for the best.

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Compelling, textured thriller in Adirondacks

While learning some interesting facts ("Adirondacks" is Iroquois for "bark-eaters," a derogatory term for ineffective hunters, and George Washington ordered assorted massacres of Indian villages), I found this novel consistently engaging. The reviews suggesting the heroine's "gullibility" forget the difference between reading a novel and living an experience. Perry isn't interested in tricking his readers, but inviting them to see and experience the world as his heroine does. All in all, she's quicker to figure out the shape of a complex story than that reviewer would have been, and this novel's merits don't depend on "figuring it out" anyway. If a mythic heroince can be credible, this one is.

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Exciting from start to finish...

Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry is the first book I've read in the Jane Whitefield series, and was a most pleasant surprise. Instead of dealing with a cop, a PI or a bounty hunter, Jane Whitefield is a half-Indian (from the Seneca Tribe) who serves as a guide to help people "disappear." She uses her native skills to help those who are trying to flee from an abusive spouse or an unsavory past.

In Vanishing Act, an ex-cop turned accountant, John Felker, is being framed by unknown persons and there is a contract out on his life. He seeks out Jane, whom he has heard about by word of mouth. But the men pursuing Felker are right on his tail, and Jane must work hard to give them the slip. But just as Jane thinks everything is finally under control, two bombshells are dropped on her, and things are not as they seem.

One thing that I really enjoyed about this book is the background on Native Americans that Vanishing Act provides. Jane is from upstate NY, and there is much about the tribes from that area-especially before and during the Revolution. Even when she travels to California, we are given information about the California Indian tribes. In this respect, Perry is a lot like Tony Hillerman and his series of Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn mysteries.

But while there is much to like about Vanishing Act, I thought the plot at times completely implausible. It's hard to believe that when Jane finally identifies the murderer, she would chase him up into the Adirondack Mountains without notifying anyone of where she was going, calling the police, and even leaving a message with someone as to the identify of the killer. It was just a bit beyond belief.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed Vanishing Act, and am planning to read Shadow Woman next.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

JANE WHITEFIELD is . . .

. . . in the one-woman business of helping the desperate disappear. Thanks to her membership in the Wolf Clan of the Seneca tribe, she can fool any pursuer, cover any trail, and then provide her clients with new identities, complete with authentic paperwork. Jane knows all the tricks, ancient and modern; in fact, she has invented several of them herself. But when Jane opens a door out of the world for an attractive fugitive named John Felker, she walks into a trap that will take all her heritage and cunning to escape. . . .

"A unique heroine, an ultracompetent woman attuned to the ancient ways of her ancestors and to the harsh realities of the modern, bureaucratic world."

--San Francisco Chronicle

"A compelling, multifaceted protagonist. Whitefield is as tough as Sam Spade, as tender as Jo in Little Women and as resourceful as Robinson Crusoe's Friday."

--Philadelphia Inquirer

"Strong-willed . . . [A] most singular creation."

--The New York Times Book Review

"Entertainingly resourceful."

--The New York Times

"One sharp and tough cookie."

--Detroit News

From the Paperback edition.

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