I wrote The Vanishing Woman as a Christmas story, ultimately as a reflection on the season.  I hoped to write a tale that would stand in a relation to the holiday much as Dickens’ Christmas tales do. I decided to write a romantic mystery, one that was contemporary but tinseled by laughter and nostalgia. Once I decided to center the story on a Christmas train trip, I then decided the story should recall old movies, both mysteries and screwball romantic comedies, old movies that feature trains — and should recall old mystery novels, like A. A. Milne’s wonderful The Red House Mystery. The plot gradually became clear to me.  You might say that the story train begins with Alfred Hitchcock, the engine, and ends with Preston Sturges, the caboose, with some Milne in the middle, the sleeper car. It’s a funny, romantic, fast-paced and dialogue-driven story of a man and a woman, strangers, meeting on a train, and of the two of them winding their way to each other. 

The cover art for The Vanishing Woman is by my friend, Syd Edwards (who also did the cover art for Big Swamp).  The drawing is entitled, Wishes. I sent Syd an early copy of the book and he read it, and we talked generally about the themes of the book and about how they might be represented, but the remarkable drawing is ultimately all Syd.  Although the story centers on a contemporary train trip, it’s nostalgic and it makes reference to The Polar Express — and so Syd chose an older, iconic engine as the centerpiece of the drawing.  The drawing is a marvelous study in circles — and the circles too, reflect themes of the story.