Tall Pines, a holiday cottage in Wales, has been abandoned. A family of five was staying there, but when the cleaner arrives, the house is abandoned. It is like an echo of the Marie Celeste – no one is there, but it seems that they just disappeared into thin air. The cleaner calls in her friend, ex-detective Mallory Dawson, but people just assume the family left in an emergency.

Pant Meinog, a cottage in Wales in 2003. A family of five lived there, but the daughters, in particular Gwenllian, were haunted by a spirit. There were signs of poltergeist activity, bruises on the girls and the final straw was when Gwenllian’s face was scarred for life by an unseen hand. The house had suffered under it’s reputation as a site of paranormal activity, so the owner changed the name of the house… to Tall Pines…

The third Mallory Dawson series, a series of, so far, quite different books. The common strand is a significant cold case investigation that Mallory focusses on, while the police take on the modern day case (with quite a lot of crossover). The first book, The Birthday Girl, was a closed circle mystery with people dying left, right and centre, whereas the second, The Sixth Lie, was almost exclusively concerning the cold case.

This book balances the two cases – it won’t come as much of a surprise to find out there is some overlap between the people involved – with as much time on one as the other, and Mallory is integrated into the police investigation. It’s an interesting case and there are a lot of twists and revelations. As is the case with modern mysteries of this ilk, there is a personal element to the story – both Mallory and DI Harri Evans have back stories that come into play, but never intrusively. Some books will have huge chunks devoted to the investigator’s personal trauma, whereas Sarah does an excellent job of including enough to make you care about the characters and tying it in to the central plot as well.

I’ve been having trouble concentrating on reading recently – various life stuff distracting me – so the simplest endorsement I can give this book is that last night, I sat down to start reading it – and this morning I’m writing this review. It hooked me from the start and the pages kept turning. A really satisfying read and an excellent mystery novel.

Many thanks to Canelo Crime for the review copy – The Vanishing Act is out now in paperback.