The Vanishing Year

July 11, 2016
Zoe Whittaker, the narrator of this convoluted novel of suspense from bestseller Moretti (While You Were Gone), used to be Hilary Lawlor, a student who dropped out of college in California and turned to drug dealing in 2009 after her adoptive mother’s death. Her testimony helped destroy a notorious sex-trafficking ring, but she fled across the country and changed her name before the perpetrators’ trial. By 2014, she’s married to Henry Whittaker, a controlling Manhattan businessman. After a college roommate recognizes her at a charity function, Zoe is nearly struck by a hit-and-run driver, and her apartment is ransacked. She concludes that one of the traffickers has found her and is trying to kill her, but perhaps she’s mistaken. Zoe’s blend of disloyalty to friends and naive trust in men with obviously sinister motives renders her unsympathetic at times. An implausible plot and chronological inconsistencies may also trouble some readers, but Moretti maintains a fast pace and creates a chillingly satisfying villain in suave, manipulative Henry. Agent: Mark Gottlieb, Trident Media.