Even though I found the identity of the killer to be glaringly obvious, I still didn't want to put The Vanishing Season down. There's much more to this book than deducing whodunit. For one thing, there's Ellery Hathaway. Ellery, who was dragged into Hell and lived to tell the tale. Ellery who thinks, "They'd never sat in a killer's closet and felt the claw marks in the wood, left there by the girls who had already died." Ellery, whose best buddy is a Basset hound named Speed Bump and the only male allowed through her front door. Ellery, whose life has been turned into countless movies of the week, and who guards her privacy fiercely.

Then there's the layered, nuanced relationship she has with the man who saved her all those years ago. Reed Markham made his name and fame writing a book about Ellery Hathaway and the monster who locked her up in his closet. But his life has changed. His marriage is a train wreck. His bosses think he's washed up. He even blew the last investigation he worked on. So... he's certainly got the time to help Ellery out.

The Vanishing Season has a fast pace that keeps readers sucked in, and even though I've already said that whodunit was no mystery to me, I still enjoyed watching the investigation unfold-- mainly because of the interplay between Ellery and Reed. I am certainly looking forward to meeting these two fantastic characters again.

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