V for Vanished

Two crimes. A heart-wrenching loss. A past that won't stay buried. The discovery of more than one shocking truth.

"... Although author Ingrid McCarthy tells us early that the protagonist commits a crime, she does a superb job of not telling us what the crime is until it happens. Until the incident takes place I never could have imagined what the crime was or why the protagonist chose to commit it. The same goes for the wild turn of events that the protagonist undergoes."
~ Readers' Favorite (5 stars)

At the age of fifty, Francis (Frank) Alexander Merriman III is a man with a tortured soul. While recovering from a heart attack, he sees his life flash by in intervals: as a child in a household with emotionally distant parents, as the target of bullies at school, and as the rebel son who breaks with the tradition of taking over the family firm. Instead, he marries his first love, Evelyn Garnier, and starts his own business. Three years into the marriage, in a moment of rage, Frank commits a crime. The ripple effect of that crime leads to a second crime: the disappearance of Evelyn.

V for Vanished is not a whodunit. It is a story of love, mistrust, deception, reconciliation, and a psychological study of how what happens in early childhood impacts important developments in the future. It is a story of how two crimes affect the protagonist and alter his environment and of how a chance encounter triggers an event that, twenty years after Evelyn’s disappearance, leads to the unravelling of a mystery, the answer to many questions, and to an open door on a new life.