Vanished by James Delargy is a thriller set in outback WA with an engaging premise. The Kane family move to an abandoned mining town in WA with their six year old son Dylan, but soon the entire family disappears. What happened to them?

This was an intriguing enough premise to draw me in and the mystery kept me plowing through the book to find the answers. The family choose the least run down cottage in the town and try to make the most of their circumstances by engaging in a home improvement project.

The novel unfolds from multiple character perspectives, with each of the parents Lorcan and Naiyana in the past and Detective Emmaline Taylor investigating their disappearance in the present. Both Lorcan and Naiyana have their reasons for leaving family and friends behind in Perth so there's plenty to keep the plot moving.

The fictional abandoned mining town of Kallayee is located in the Great Victoria Desert, and Delargy does an exceptional job of bringing the remote location and the desolate landscape into sharp focus. The writing is also compelling, and I especially enjoyed this insight into the despicable nature of some elements of humanity.

"The unspoken had been uttered, leaving a bitter taste. It was disgusting. It was horrible. And now that it was out in the open, it was a possibility." Page 315

Vanished by James Delargy is highly recommended for fans of Jane Harper or Chris Hammer.

* Copy courtesy of Simon & Schuster * ( )

“A family was missing. They had been in the town and then they weren’t. What they were even doing therein the first place wasn’t yet known. No one should have been there. No one had for close to fifty years.”

James Delargy has followed his impressive debut novel, 55, with another compelling thriller set in Australia’s unforgiving outback, Vanished.

Tasked to investigate the disappearance of the Maguire family, Lorcan, his wife Naiyana, and their six year old son, Dylan, from Kallayee, an abandoned town on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert, Major Case Squad Detective Emmaline Taylor is puzzled by what she finds left behind - a home on the brink of collapse, its contents ransacked; blood smears, though not enough to suggest a fatality; a tunnel littered with chocolate bar wrappers, a dead end, like all their leads seem to be, until she finds a body being savaged by a pack of dingo’s on the outskirts of town.

Unfolding from multiple perspectives, shifting between before and after their disappearance, it soon becomes apparent that the Maguires left Perth to set up home in the remote West Australian ghost town not in the spirit of adventure, but because they had few alternatives available to them.

Though the Maguire’s tell themselves they are in Kallayee to become closer as a family, the cracks in their marriage are obvious. They lie to themselves as much as they lie to each other and eventually neither Lorcan nor Naiyana are particularly sympathetic or even likeable. If not for the presence of Dylan I’m not sure I’d care much what happened to them. I liked Emmaline a lot though, she’s smart, determined and interesting.

Clever plotting ensures there are several possibilities, from the benign to the ominous, that may explain the family’s disappearance. Even though we are privy to information Emmaline is not, Delargy doesn’t share everything with the reader, subtly undermining what we think we know, allowing for surprising twists.

Short chapters ensure a good pace, and the author effectively builds the suspense in both timelines. The desolate, broken landscape creates a claustrophobic, hostile backdrop to the story that adds to the tension.

Vanished is a gripping, atmospheric thriller with an unexpected but satisfying conclusion. ( )