Hmm - I know this is a true crime story... But it just didn't really work for me.
I found it a bit boring.
However, I do like the idea of bringing new attention to these crimes... Such crimes should never be forgotten!

I have loved all of Claire McGowan’s fiction and couldn’t wait to read The Vanishing Triangle. However, it is nonfiction and not nearly as good as the author’s novels. She mentions Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark which is widely viewed as a classic of true crime/nonfiction, but I’ll be Gone is meticulously organized and the story creates tremendous suspense. I didn’t feel Triangle was organized which makes it hard for it to be suspenseful. The material about 1990’s Ireland is very well known especially in the US and Europe and I didn’t find McGowan’s descriptions and explanations added much to the murder victims’ stories. If this book had been written when the scandals were breaking about the Catholic Church it might have added to the conversation. But in 2022 it is not news that the Church (particularly John Charles McQuaid) ran a tight ship especially in the area of sexuality while a large number (one is too many) of priests and nuns behaved in ways absolutely antithetical to the values they aggressively pushed onto the laity..

I was offered a preview copy of this to read by the publishers and hadn’t really paid much heed to the fact this is a fact-based book.

The account of numerous murders and disappearances of women in Ireland in the 80s and later is one which Claire McGowan obviously felt compelled to write. Her fury and disbelief at the way these cases were handled scorches through every single line of this book.

Because of this, I think that there is a lot of repetition, and it can be hard to follow her evidential threads.

I hadn’t heard of these murders and that’s the very issue that seems to have driven Claire on. The brutal rapes and murders of all of these women appear to have been largely dismissed, remained unreported in case of recrimination and retribution. Ireland seemed to want to remain so untarnished by the appalling violence against women that McGowan reports that it just ignored what was happening.

McGowan’s anger is palpable and I couldn’t put the book down but as she says, there is no conclusion. Her evidence undoubtedly will have identified men who are very likely to have been the murderers but no one is really looking to make arrests - even with the new team looking into the cases. So there is no pay off. The only justice for these women and their families is that Claire McGowan has kept their names alive and is telling a new audience about the horrific failings of the Irish/Northern Irish police when it came to investigating these disappearances and deaths.

It’s an interesting read but McGowan’s incandescent fury makes for an outpouring of details and information that left me feeling horribly agitated and confused. It’s a story that should be told but it wasn’t what I had expected.

I really enjoyed this book! I’d never heard of these cases, so it was interesting to read about them and connect them to everything else happening in Ireland at the time. I’m glad that Claire McGowan is able to shine a light on these women and their stories.

I received an ARC of, The Vanishing Triangle, by Claire McGowan. This book is so well written. The poor families of the victims, they walked out the door one day, and never came back.

This is not a book I expected from Claire McGowan. I have only ever read her fiction books before. What an eye opener and what a mystery. Being “real life” and not fiction there are no clear conclusions as to what happened to these women (although Claire does have her own theories) or even if their disappearances and deaths are connected, so if you like a nice neat ending this is not the book for you but if you are interested in what life was like in Ireland during The Troubles, want to see the darker side of life in a country which is normally portrayed as Guiness, Leprechauns and kissing the Blarney Stone, then I thoroughly recommend it. It is terrifying how little time and effort was put into finding these missing women. This is a country where divorce was not legal until 1995 and abortion until 2018. It would seem that between the church and The Troubles women were very low down in the pecking order. How the police could dismiss these missing women as suicides or runaways is beyond belief, especially in the cases where the bodies were never found, but it does seem they looked for the easy way out with so much more to occupy their minds.

Claire has done her research in a thorough and clear sighted way and not allowed her conclusions to be coloured by the fact that Ireland is her country of birth. She tells it how it is, warts and all and touches on what it was like to live in Ireland during The Troubles. I don’t think enjoy is a word you can use about a book which is mainly about the senseless violence of the 1980s and 90s, women who disappear, some never to be seen again some killed and not receiving the justice they deserve and grieving families looking for answers. It is, however, interesting and informative. Despite being an adult during this era I knew nothing about these murders and disappearances.

This book came as a surprise to me who was expecting another exciting Claire McGowan fictional book. Instead it gives an absolutely fascinating account of different women who suddenly disappeared in Ireland during the 90's. It asks pertinent questions as to why so little was done to find answers yet gives credit where it is merited. This was all analysed against a background of the social and political history of Ireland. A truly riveting book.

I do not usually read true crime but I have always enjoyed Claire McGown’s books. This one was a tough read in as much as the content was very scary and sad in the same measure. How have these things in Ireland gone on so long almost unnoticed. Obviously the troubles are a great part of the problem. So many women have disappeared, not all young, over the years and very few bodies have been found which must be terrible for the families left behind. We all know the role the Catholic Church (I am a catholic myself) has played in the abuse etc over the years and how the Priests were just moved around by their hierarchy – terrible and I would guess it still goes on. I know that Ireland is a torn country and still is today. The problem with many of the women who disappeared were due to the days before DNA profiling, mobile phones etc and it was interesting to read that some murderers were found many years later due to DNA which they themselves thought would never happen. I am not sure how the Police etc investigated with these tools and as some of the women were classed as depressed or a street worker the police put them down to their lives. What about the ones who disappeared near Christmas etc with no “baggage”. How were they investigated. Not well I would guess. I do feel that with the evidence we have today many families, if these disappearances happened today, would have closure but, of course, that assumes the bodies are found. Terrible traumas and it made me very sad to read about this. On saying this I am pleased to have had the opportunity and have learned a great deal because of reading this book. I think Claire McGowan dealt with this book really sympathetically as well as not pulling any punches with the narrative. We can all learn lessons

I like the premise of the book but found it confusing and subjective. Personally it didn't work for me.

The idea of a famous crime fiction author researching and writing about a real-life string of murders is already compelling, but where this book succeeds is that the focus isn't on the forensics or speculations, it's about the way Ireland let these women down.

McGowan writes in detail about how Ireland's "culture of silence" led to evidence going unreported for too long, or people staying out of the way when they heard or saw something disturbing. Like the priests who dug up a body and didn't immediately say anything, or those people who drove past Jo Jo Dullard being dragged by her hair into a car.

This book was important to read, but incredibly hard to get through because of just how many women and girls were forgotten in the last forty or so years. It's incredibly well-written, though, and I'd like to read McGowin's other books because of how good this was.

This book is fascinating. I'm a bit of true crime buff, but I'd never even heard of this "phenomenon." I'm so glad that I picked this up. I think it's very important that McGowan is honest about not just what happened, but the context in which it was happening. She did a great job placing the murdered and missing women in the broader context of the culture of Ireland in the 90s as a whole. McGowan also talks about how far we have to come as Western societies as a whole to even scratch the surface of protecting women.
I found this book absolutely fascinating in the context that it gives. I also truly commend Clair McGowan for tackling this so brazenly and honestly and speaking the truth at all costs. It's so important that these women's stories live on.

This was a difficult subject to read about, but McGowan handles it with the care these stories deserve. I struggled to stay with it because of its weightiness. In the end, though, I"m grateful to have gotten this window into the author's personal connection to these stories of missing women.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy for review.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I love to read about true crime but this fell a bit short because there is not a tidy ending. However, I love Claire McGowan's writing and she clearly took this project on because of the importance of the subject and the personal nature of the location. She does a nice job of blending the reality of the location, with the border and the friction between the religions, with the general "feeling" that people still felt safe, like the evil things don't happen there. I appreciated this voice that spoke to how these crimes were perceived at the time. I would have liked more from the journalistic side of the story.
Overall, an important topic and one that needs to have focus shone on it.
#TheVanishingTriangle #NetGalley #AmazonPublishingUK

A look into a series of mysterious deaths of women in the 1990s-2000s in Ireland. This was a time marked by turmoil, especially with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The author investigates to see if there is something more nefarious going on.

I'm glad these women are being written about, but I wish there was a different organization. I think if it had been more linear it would've been easy to follow. The author also ultimately concludes that the likelihood of a serial killer is slim. I wish that this had been in the intro and then she said something like because of this, I'm choosing to focus on the victims and their stories. I think that would have been a more compelling narrative.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Probably my fault but I didn’t realise this was a true crime book and assumed fiction like her other work. It’s a genre that I don’t enjoy much and sadly therefore didn’t particularly enjoy this (I’ll have my true crime in the form of a Netflix documentary thanks!).
The writing is good as usual but was too unconnected for me, and with no real outcome felt too unfinished.
Fans of the genre might love it though!

I struggled with this book a bit. The content had the makings of something really interesting, in that it sought to put in to context the disappearance of several women on the island of Ireland over the years, both in terms of possible links between their disappearances and the social context at the time. But the book meanders and is repetitive, and I found this off putting.

I appreciate a passion project. I am not a big true crime reader, maybe many are like this? Stabs in the dark at unsolved crimes? I don't know. Not for me, prefer her fiction novels!

Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Fans of true crime will devour this book.

Fans of Ireland will be challenged by the violent, gritty look past the expected tales of leprechauns, beautiful views an welcoming citizens.

An informative, chilling story of eight murders.

The Vanishing Triangle describes a section of Ireland where eight women have disappeared. Some of their bodies are found and some are not. The author discusses each of the cases, giving the readers a view of the complicated social/political/economic factors that may have prevented the solving of such cases.

The first few pages of this book are chilling as one of the crimes is told from a second person view, inserting the reader straight into the middle of the action. The writer has a clear voice, and I couldn’t help but enjoy her narrative style. Although there was a lot of information in this book it was told in a personable manner, that kept the reader connected to the story.

There were times that I got some of the women and their stories confused, there are a lot of names, some of them similar or the same in this book. Perhaps it would have a better idea to have each chapter on a case-by-case basis to make them more distinguishable.

I found learning about Ireland and its history riveting, I was surprised by some of the facts the author highlighted. I live in the UK and had no idea about some of the things that had occurred there and are still occurring there at the current moment.

I feel this book would have benefited from a map of the area that the vanishing triangle was fixed in along with markers indicting the areas the women were abducted from and where some of the bodies were found. It was hard to imagine the proximity of some of the areas.

Overall, McGowen does a fantastic job of showcasing issues that are both historical and still relevant today, it gave me a lot of food for thought.

Rating: Four Stars

Thank you to NetGallery and the publish for the advanced copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Interesting and heartbreaking. True crime novel that was very well written and made me care. Thank you netgalley and publisher for this arc in exchange of an honest review.