VANISHING ACT

A most intriguing heroine, with an even more intriguing vocation, is the centerpiece for what could be Perry's most successful thriller since his Edgar-winning debut, Butcher's Boy (1982). Jane Whitefield is a Native American whose special talent is making people disappear. A battered wife, an informer on the run from the Mob, just about anyone with a real need to change identities and vanish can turn to Whitefield and find an avenue to remove them from the world. Because Whitefield is part Seneca and uses her Indian heritage and contacts to further her clients' interests, readers will get some insight into Native American life, but most are likely to be even more fascinated by the entire process of changing one's identity and becoming someone else. Whitefield comes home from helping a woman escape her brutal, sadistic husband to find a man called John Felker waiting for her. Claiming to be an ex-cop turned accountant, he says he's discovered half a million dollars in a bank account under his name and fears he is being set up as the fall guy for an embezzling scheme. He says there's a contract out on his life as well. Staying just one step ahead of four dangerous pursuers, Whitefield helps Felker vanish, but not before—against all her instincts and rules- -becoming romantically involved with him. Then things start to go horribly wrong, and the woman who always helped people disappear now has to turn her talents to finding her most recent client, a man who was not at all what he seemed to be. When events rush to a climax deep in the Northern Woods of the Adirondacks in upstate New York, she must rely on the tracking and survival skills of her ancestors—or die. A fine thriller, and Whitefield surely warrants a return appearance.