Less a serial-style whodunnit than a study of what it means to be a woman in Ireland. A gripping and heartbreaking read.

Thank you NetGalley for this book!

I’ve been meaning to read Claire McGowan for a while. I’ve heard good things about several of her books. When I saw this one available on NetGalley, and knowing it was true crime, I knew I had to check it out. Sadly, this one did not work at all for me.

From Goodreads:

From the bestselling author of What You Did comes a true-crime investigation that cast a dark shadow over the Ireland of her childhood.

Ireland in the 1990s seemed a safe place for women. With the news dominated by the Troubles, it was easy to ignore non-political murders and sexual violence, to trust that you weren’t going to be dragged into the shadows and killed. But beneath the surface, a far darker reality had taken hold.

In this candid investigation into the society and circumstances that allowed eight young women to vanish without a trace—no conclusion or conviction, no resolution for their loved ones—bestselling crime novelist Claire McGowan delivers a righteous polemic against the culture of secrecy, victim-blaming and shame that left these women’s bodies unfound, their fates unknown, their assailants unpunished.

McGowan reveals an Ireland not of leprechauns and craic but of outdated social and sexual mores, where women and their bodies were of secondary importance to perceived propriety and misguided politics—a place of well-buttoned lips and stony silence, inadequate police and paramilitary threat.

Was an unknown serial killer at large or was there something even more insidious at work? In this insightful, sensitively drawn account, McGowan exposes a system that failed these eight women—and continues to fail women to this day.

I really wanted to like this book, but it was so repetitive and disjointed. The murders are discussed in every chapter, but some are within the triangle, and some are adjacent to in some way, but there were SO MANY NAMES that it was almost hard to care about any of them. I lost track of how many times McGowan self-indulgently said “if I were writing a novel about this, here’s where I would write this xyz thing,” or “because of privacy laws, I can’t say who the suspect is, but he’s well known on the internet.” I love true crime, but McGowan didn’t hit the mark at all with this one.

As concluded by the author, maybe the important point about these cases is not who did it.. maybe it's what they tell us about the world generally and its attitudes to women. About the kind of people who get looked for when they're missing or whose murders gets priority and those who don't. About the complacency and judgment directed towards missing women often by the those who should be searching for them.
I started the book not knowing, thinking it is one of the author's excellent thrillers.. to get stunned by its shocking content. I loved the consistency between this book's work and how Claire support the idea of not blaming the victim in her fiction works as well.
Thanks NetGalley, Claire McGowan and Amazon Publishing UK for this important book.

I read enough of this to warrant posting this.
I didn't enjoy it and even though it was a short book I didn't finish it. I was shocked as I usually really enjoy this author's work so much.

I'm sorry that I could not finish it.
#netgalley #amazonpublishingUk

A true crime book about the disappearance and murder of young women in the later years of the 20th century and early.21at century in Ireland. I found it quite a depressing essay and did not finish.

I have read previous books by Claire McGowan and thoroughly enjoyed them. This one was different to those but equally as interesting - it was well researched although slightly depressing. I don't think it will be for everyone but it was worth a read if true crime is your thing. 3.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley, Amazon Publishing and Claire McGowan for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Eight women disappeared from Ireland in the 90s - this is their story.

The Vanishing Triangle is a dark, haunting and compelling read. It is clearly a well researched book. I think this will appeal to the true crime fans. It wasn’t for me but I think others will throughly enjoy it.

Sorry but didn’t realise what this was about I got it as I have read lots of her books I did read a little of this book but it wasn’t my thing.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC

For such a small country, Ireland sure has a lot of rapes and murders. I was shocked by the listing of woman after woman who disappeared, some to be found later murdered, and some never found at all.

With so many victims, and not a lot of time spent on each one, I found it a little hard to keep track of who was who, and picking out the ones that were potentially connected within this "Vanishing Triangle".

Overall, a pretty interesting glimpse into the dark side of modern-day Ireland.

The Vanishing Triangle by Claire McGowan is a non-fiction book about the women who went missing in Ireland in the 1990s, in an area dubbed The Vanishing Triangle. Being from Ireland, the most shocking thing to me was how little I knew about any of these women before reading this book. McGowan’s clear empathy when discussing not just the women, but also their family and friends who are still looking for them today, was so evident throughout the book. The Vanishing Triangle is a great example of what a non fiction book about true crime should be. There was no emphasis on lurid details, or glamorisation of what had happened. Instead, it highlighted the circumstances that existed at the time that let these women down over and over again. Beyond that, the author shows how few of those circumstances have changed today. The contrasts drawn between then and now was incredibly effective way to demonstrate what has changed but also what hasn’t. Despite the understandably melancholic tone of the book, it ends on a hopeful note. Claire highlights how these aren’t cold cases, how the Gardaí involved have not let them be forgotten and how people are still being questioned to this day.

The Vanishing Triangle by Claire McGowan is a non-fiction piece about the eight women who disappeared in the 90's in Ireland. This is a well researched book, which pushed the book up one additional star for me. These women and their lives, their stories deserve to be told and I feel that McGowan does a great job of balancing information with the stories of the women who went missing.

Thank you to NetGalley, Amazon Publishing UK and author Claire McGowan for this digital review copy for me to read. My reviews are voluntary and my opinions are my own.

I really wanted to love this one because I have loved McGowan's other books. However, it just fell flat. This style of book was written as more of a research piece. The Vanishing Triangle is a theory about missing women cases in northern Ireland and how McGowan believes they all might some how be connected in a way. I found it very difficult to keep up with all of the different cases she kept trying to intertwine. A lot of the time when I was reading it felt like a big run-on sentence. I know where she was trying to go with this one, but it just didn't work for me.

The Vanishing Triangle is a dark and compelling read, an essay from Claire McGowan, examining the trafic disappearances (probable murders) of a number of Irish women from the 1990s onwards. McGowan is an experienced author of crime fiction and perhaps it is her interest in this topic that helped to inspire her to write this novel. It is certainly a departure from her usual work.
Throughout the essay, McGowan references many of these cases, names and stories that are at once both tragic and familiar to anyone living in Ireland during the 1990s and in more recent years - Annie McCarrick, JoJo Dollard, Fiona Pender. These unfortunate women were used as cautionary tales - young girls and women were warned to be careful, to behave themselves, dress appropriately etc. As pointed out by McGowan, on numerous occasions, we are a society struggling to overcome the oppression and guilt of a overzealous Catholic Church. And most certainly a society where guilt and secrets were part and parcel of life.
McGowan does state that she is not intending to reinvestigate any of these cases (these cases have been reviewed multiple times), but provides an overview of the cases and the concept of the 'triangle' or area where many of the disappearances took place.
The idea of the disappearances being linked is not a new one but to read of McGowan belief that this is the case, while being reminded of the facts of each case, is chilling indeed.
McGowan mentions speaking to many of the Gardaí (Irish police) involved in the cases and of their own theories but of course there is no evidence available to support these views. Many more than we have evidence to support the authors beliefs that the bodies may well be buried in the foundations of various 'Celtic Tiger buildings or the Dublin mountains.
The Vanishing Triangle is an interesting read and does add to the existing bank of opinions on this topic but sadly there is nothing new here.

This is definitely not your typical true crime novel, in that the bad guys aren't brought to justice at the end. Instead, it seems to be a narrative in which the author is piecing all of these things together and thinking out loud. I really liked this approach. I felt like I identified with the author a lot, especially because we are right about the same age and both had the same kind of ultra-Catholic education. I found this to be a very thoughtful look at the way crimes against women are handled, and the narratives that are constructed around the women themselves. This one is going to stick with me for awhile.
I would absolutely recommend this book to others.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK!

This is non-fiction. The story of women in Ireland who disappeared . They were raped and/or murdered. It is a harrowing tale and does deserve attention, but I found the book disjointed, so it perhaps does not get the serious message over as well as it might. Sometimes relying on hearsay and media stories, the evidence could be ordered better and although the authors own experiences of Ireland at that time do add to the story that life seemed normal in Ireland at the time, it did not seem relevant to what happened to these women and girls.
What does get across is that the authorities have not always taken the disappearance of these women seriously and mistakes were made which allowed convicted offenders to reoffend. Perhaps not totally suprising given that a lot was going on in Ireland at the time, in politics and terrorist actions. I will come back to this book in the future. Yes this story needs to be told and heard.
Thank you to Net Galley for the ARc in exchange for an honest review

This book broke my heart, a must read about history we cannot forget. The author discussed the impact of many laws and behaviors in Ireland from the perspective of a Northerner.

The Vanishing Triangle is unlike any other book I have read. Claire McGowan takes an indepth look into variuos unsolved cases of missing women in Southern and Northern Ireland and she says from the start that she isn't looking to solve the cases. This book highlights the issues that have affected the investigations or the lack of investigation, the attitudes towards women and the authorities.

A very interesting and eye opening read.

Thanks to NetGalleyand the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

This was good dive into the investigation of what was going on in Ireland in the 90s. I expected more research based work, but it was a great read and definitely had me interested to learn more.

#FirstLine ~ Prologue - Imagine this.

This book was heavy., but such a dynamic true crime story. It was written in truth and honor to the missing. It was well researched and shined a light on a system that failed in more ways than one. It is a story I did not know about and I am now glad that I now do. This book will stay with you long after you finish it.

The Vanishing Triangle is unlike any of Claire McGowan's books. I have to admit that I have not travel to Ireland and knew very little about it; therefore, I was hooked from the Prologue on. McGowan presents us a dark Ireland full of unsolved crimes where the most likely killers is walking the streets, a country that allows religion and the IRA to have a say in who gets prosecuted and who gets a blind eye. Most importantly, it shows how a bias Ireland judges women based on external reason and determine their disappearance are justified.

The amount of research Claire McGowan has done for this book is impressive.

Thank you Claire McGowan, Little A publishing and NetGalley for this copy.