Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
In Upstate New York, veterinarian Max Thorn and Ellen Bradshaw still deeply love each other after living together for seven years without the benefit of marriage. As hundreds of birds for no apparent reason land on their property, Ellen begins her daily jog. Max stunningly watches her vanish into thin air.
Knowing her influential father and the law think he killed Ellen and needing to find his beloved, Max decides to search for her. The Internet describes similar historical events involving birds and vanishing. The weird news includes a story of hundreds of dolphins escorting two teenage girls near Piper Bay, Florida. With nothing else to go by, Max vanishes in a more mundane way than Ellen did, heading to the Florida island in hope of finding clues. On the island are two dolphin research facilities. The Navy runs a weapons research program that abuses its specimens. A civilian runs the other whose daughter has a strange Doolittle affinity with animals. How all this ties together with the mysterious vanishing of Ellen requires reading part two of VANISHED.
This is an exciting science fiction thriller that is frightening in its simplicity. Using "heretic" theory on the collective mindset of species and what is inherently learned by each new generation, T.J. MacGregor paints a dark picture of animal weapons research. Though an unnecessary gimmick propels the tale forward, readers will feel the rising tension and need to know what happened to Ellen and how her disappearance ties to Alpha, an abused dolphin. Readers will bestow kudos to T. J. MacGregor.