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Vanishing Lady is the latest mystery offering from seasoned author Chris O'Grady. It centers on investigator Steve Fraser as he attempts, at the behest of her husband, to find one Sally Franklin, who also turns out to be the wife of Phillip Devon under the name Norma. But Sally's penchant for and skill at changing identities make her a hard lady to find. As Fraser looks for the proverbial needle, he confronts a chaotic haystack: a grimy morass of deception, financial crime and murder that obscures reality and makes Fraser question his own perceptions. The woman he is tracking seems more and more like a ghost in the wind.
What the Apaches had done was find a way to withdraw inside their own minds until their self, their spirit, was no longer there, or at least was subdued to a lowest-possible-point-achievable, and was therefore undetectable by the psychic feelers being sent out by the enemies hunting them.
Fraser's search centers on the men who have known Sally/Norma, in one of her many identities: Howard Franklin, Phillip Devon, and Ted Thendara. Each man's account of the woman in question is much like the blind man with one hand on the elephant. O'Grady has a strong sense of dialogue, and it is dialogue that holds the story on course, driven through the noir encounters between Fraser and the colorful people he encounters in his search–and the over-arching shadow of what one of them refers to as "a woman's powerful character." Vanishing Lady is more cherchez le femme than whodunit? and as such, offers an unusual and compelling addition to the realm of dark mystery fiction.