I have read all of Claire McGowan's books and this one is a different style of writing. Its a documentary rather than fiction. Nevertheless I enjoyed it and found it informative and interesting.

Claire McGowan is becoming a recognized name in the thriller world.  I really liked her novel The Push, but this attempt at true crime falls a little flat.  Think too much Ann Rule plus "ripped from the headlines" with more than a dash of memoir.  Plus at times it reads a little like a senior thesis.  The author admits that she is stepping out of her comfort zone, but perhaps she should have just fictionalized what she knows of the story instead.

I don’t really have strong opinions on this book, it was just ok. Whilst learning about the disappearances mentioned was interesting, the book was very repetitive and I wouldn’t really call it a true crime book.

This is an interesting, heartbreaking crime novel. It's just a bit difficult to follow, as I'm not familiar with Ireland, so I found myself googling quite a bit, so if you aren't from Ireland, you may find yourself doing that as well. The stories of these women are well-researched, and I appreciate the time that went into this. I think true-crime readers are going to really enjoy this one!

This was such an interesting book that completely kept my attention. It is very well written and well researched. That being said, the subject matter is hard and sad and depressing.
Thank you to net galley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

The Vanishing Triangle is a true crime novel, based on several woman who have gone missing in Ireland. While I normally really enjoy Claire McGowan's books, this did not scratch that true crime itch for me
I felt that there was more focus on Claire's own town and history than on the women that had gone missing, and Claire tried too hard to tie the Troubles into this

The Vanishing Triangle is a triangulation of sites in Ireland where eight women have been abducted and never seen alive again. Claire McGowan is a well known fiction writer and grew up in Ireland herself. She tells the stories of multiple women who went missing and the little to no reaction their kidnapping causes afterwards. Cleary the society at large is an issues.

I would have liked more works and references cited in this book. As a someone who has only visited Ireland, it's a bit hard to follow at times but I can see real similarities between the situations depicted in the book and issues in the US. The four decades of changes in society alone make this book worth reading - a powerful and damning look at Irish society.
#AmazonPublishingUk #NetGalley #NetGalleyReads

An interesting look at the disappearance of women in Ireland. Good if you like real life crime and want to find out more about things that happened in Ireland. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book in return for my honest feedback.

This is not an easy book to read. However, it is informative. If I were reading this book about America, I would probably not have been surprised. One tends to think of Ireland as calm and serene, except for some exceptions, of course. One does not realize that serial murderers live there also. Why not? I have no idea other than they are not made public as much as in our country...this author has done extensive research...at times, it was difficult to read the details and keep track of the dates...that being said, this is a can't put down book...is it a warning to young women everywhere? Perhaps...One does not know how much warning to give...when to let go...and the author pointed out good questions...why not women walking alone? This book was sent to me by Netgalley for review electronically...I look forward to more from this author.

True crime

I jumped into this book without having any idea what it was about. I was pleasantly surprised by the contents. Claire McGowan writes about the epidemic of missing and murdered women in Ireland during the nineties. The vanishing triangle is the geographic area, centred on Dublin, in which a spate of women went missing between 1993 and 1998. There are theories that this was the work of a serial offender but there are many other theories and McGowan offers only an educated guess on some of the cases. She also identifies many other disappearances that may or may not be related to eight cases she focuses on.

What she does really well is put these disappearances into the social and political context that was Ireland during that era. It was a time of great social upheaval and the Troubles were still going on. Homosexuality had only just recently been de-criminalised and I don’t remember the specific years but in the same era as contraception was legalised - yes, you read that right, it was so recent! Abortion was still a no-no. Divorce was only allowed very recently and the last Magdalen laundry only closed it’s doors in 1996! Ireland was still in the grip of the Catholic Church and sex was still a shameful subject. Particularly for women.

Conviction rates for sexual assaults are still very low today but back then it was extremely difficult. Women were made to feel shameful for simply going about their lives. A lot of abuse was hidden behind closed doors and not spoken of for shame. It is therefore not surprising that the police response in many of the cases sought solutions that blamed the women. Did she run away with a man? Did she take a dangerous path home? Was she dressed provocatively? Was she depressed? Maybe she killed herself? And so on.

McGowan also stresses the Troubles themselves seemed to dominate the news. What is one missing woman when a bomb has killed many more? I found the book interesting and informative although of course, as a woman, it’s all very depressing to see how little has changed. I don’t think the issue is worse in Ireland than anywhere else but, nevertheless, it was an interesting piece of research, especially as the author lived through those times in the same area and can speak with conviction of her experiences.

On the other hand there was a lot of repetition and drawing of potentially long bows. Many thanks to Netgalley and Amazon Publishing UK for the much appreciated arc which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

I enjoyed her previous novel What You Did!
But the Vanishing Triangle by Claire McGowan was just as amazing.
Such a well written novel and not at all what I was expecting!
Great characters that were fully developed.
The writing is simply brilliant and hooked me immediately.
It was very suspenseful. I could not put this book down. It sent me on a rollercoaster of twists and turns until I got to the very end.

“I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.”

Amazon Publishing UK & Little A,
Thank You for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!
I will post my review to my platforms, blog, B&N and Waterstone closer to pub date.

This was a hard book to read, faced with so many young women going missing and yet seemingly so little effort put in to finding them or if they had been murdered, who by.
The author gave a lot of insight to them but also seemed to be piecing them together with very little evidence to go on.

I received an arc of this book in exchange for a review.

I'm a fan of this authors books and this one was different from the rest. Well, it was different from most. It was really all about their take on these women that went missing in Ireland. They go through what it was like then. How it felt safer than it really was even with the soldiers hiding in the hedges they had to be afraid would shoot them as they walked from school. It went through the accounts of what they knew of different women and as with all true crime you don't always get a nice and tidy answer to what happened.

I'd say this book so different than what you'd typically see so it's not for everyone but was definitely interesting.

Loved Claire McGowan’s The Push, so really pleased to have been offered this arc, thank you.

The insights to the thoughts and views of the author of the organisations and authorities within the island of Ireland at the time of the setting are dark and deeply disturbing, and it must have taken great courage to make such a stand. These institutions are huge, particularly the Catholic Church, and although we are all aware of the faults and misdemeanours within such organisations, it takes a brave soul to face them down. In these more enlightened times, perhaps women will be treated as fairly and as humanly as men by the powers that be.

This book is an account of murders and missing women in Ireland, both sides of the border, from 1993 to 1998. Due to the lack of evidence, incompetence and poor interest, the majority of these crimes have never been solved. The fact that these crimes received so little attention could be because of several issues, including that they happened to women who must have asked for it, or there were more serious problems to worry about.

The Ireland of the author’s childhood is a contradiction, on one side there is the beautifully idyllic countryside, with youngsters allowed to roam. Then there is the worry of “The Troubles”, another side to the coin, blighting all lives.

The author grew up in the eighties/nineties, and says that even with stricter parents, she was still allowed to wander, and it was common for lifts to be offered and taken, often from strangers, in the rural areas where public transport was a wish more often than an event.

Although this book centres on ‘The Vanishing Triangle”, through her research McGowan as discovered many more vanishings, from as early as 1972. All, or any of these events could be linked in with the Triangle, or maybe it is pure coincidence. It’s never been fully considered that these crimes could be linked, remember this was a time before DNA came to the fore, plus the police either side of the border did not communicate very much. What McGowan has done has brought the events together, explaining the possibility of connections and similarities. Was there one perpetrator, or many at work at this time? Or even murderers working in partnership? Of course it’s highly probable that there was more than one killer, as some of the victims must have known their attacker/abducter.

This book is mind blowing in its construction and totally absorbing, I was left wondering “What next? Why didn’t the authorities see the connections?” Although it is an Ireland of two halves, it is still a very small country, easily navigated and travelled, so it could be one or two people. Perhaps we shall never know.

So many women, in the main forgotten and ignored, whose lives were taken from them and no justice served.

As written this was a country with a “culture of silence” that prevailed throughout Ireland in these times, and “a land ruled by corruption, cruelty and deep hypocrisy”.

If there could be one improvement in this book, it would have been a timeline graph to help keep the crimes in order. There were so many names it was difficult to keep them in some kind of order. Nevertheless, this did not spoil a well written, thought provoking book. Enjoyable is not the right expression for something so awful, perhaps appreciative is more apt.

Thank you NetGalley.

This is my 4th book by this author so I was excited to see she had come out with a new book in May 2022. Based in Ireland about 8 women in the 90's who went missing and then found murdered. This book is different than other book she has written. We learn about all these missing women and their details involving their cases. A lot went unsolved all those years ago. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early release in exchange for my honest review.

This was a hard book to read, both about the violence/fear that women have to deal with and how inadequate the justice system is in dealing with it/protecting men, short sentences, being released to re-offend.. There was a lot to read and some of it was repetitive. It was interesting to learn more about Ireland and the culture there. A small country that was considered both safe and dangerous, where it often was dark in the mid afternoon. Women being blamed for what men did to them. This is about five unsolved cases of women who were still missing in the mid to late 90's and it's connection to both earlier cases and to more current ones