Thirty-two-year-old Heather Powell walks into a house and shoots two people dead in cold blood. So begins Claire Douglas's engrossing mystery Then She Vanishes.
Heather's sister, Flora, disappeared in the summer of 1994. In March 2012, an enraged Heather kills 58-year-old Clive Wilson and his 76-year-old mother, Deidre. Police go to arrest Heather, but find her unconscious and bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest. She's rushed to the hospital, where she slips into a coma and can't be charged or interrogated until she awakens.
Heather's mother Margot's house is surrounded by reporters clamoring for a statement. Among them is Jessica Fox, a childhood friend of Heather, sent by her editor to exploit her relationship with the Powell family. Margot holds a grudge against Jessica for ghosting Heather right after Flora went missing, but Jessica convinces Margot to grant an exclusive interview to control Heather's story and make the other reporters back off. Jessica and Margot work together to find out why Heather committed murder. What they don't realize is that only Heather knows the truth about Flora's disappearance.
Douglas (The Sisters) explores how easily a happy family can fracture by failing to communicate with one another. Lies become bitterly held truths and everyone suffers in Then She Vanishes. Douglas slowly oozes out the plot by giving her main characters individual chapters to tell their own version of events. This Rashomon-esque technique can feel slightly repetitive, but this tantalizing story has so many plot twists that readers will be awestruck when they learn the dark motivations behind these characters' actions. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer