Customer Reviews

Vanishing Act (Robin Light Mysteries)

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This is the first Robin Light mystery I have read, but it will not be my last. It is not a deep book, and is fast and easy to read. It keep my interest by having surprising facts turn up throughout the book, right up to the end. With my last child, a daughter!, going off to college in the fall, and having visited Syracuse University often, this book truly gave me the something to think about late at night.

This was my first Robin Light book. Greatly enjoyed the story, but I felt the mystery resolved itself a little too neatly. I really liked Robin and her boyfriend George. This won't be my last Robin Light book, I now am planning on reading the whole series.

Never been to Syracuse University, never even been to Syracuse, NY. Does it matter? No. Vanishing Act, by Barbara Block, sent shivers down my spine and made me rethink my own college days. SU student Melissa Hayes is missing, local and campus police are clueless, suspects abound and only Robin Light can help poor Ms. Hayes' family through the ordeal. Through a series of twists and turns, Robin pulls teeth to get the information some people would rather she not find. Peril, suspense, and a not-so-typical ending leads you to think back to those bygone days at school, and ponder the supposed care-free moments and the loss of youthful innocence.

We are back once again in Syracuse, NY with Robin Light in Barbara Block's latest mystery. Based on the real disappearance of a Syracuse University student, the refreshing story places the reader back to a familiar place- cheap beer and greasy hamburgers in the seedily depicted atmosphere of Syracuse, specifically events around Syracuse University.

In Vanishing Act, after both Syracuse and University police fail to find missing student Melissa Hayes, Robin Light is hired as a private investigator to locate her. Robin is thrown into a whirlwind where no one seems to be cooperative in her search. Robin is left to her own devices to find Melissa before her mother dies of cancer.

Once again, this book ends in Robin Light fashion- not so nice, but very captivating to the very end. This book make you want to read all the way through until the mystery is solved!!!

Steven Obler

Bryan Hayes dropped his sister Melissa off at her dorm, agreeing to pick her back up in a few hours. When he returns, Melissa is gone. Four months later, the young lady remains missing. Her mother, dying from cancer, desperately wants to know what happened to her girl.

A fellow night school student provides Bryan with the name of Robin Light, a private investigator and the owner of a pet store that specializes in exotic creatures and assorted reptiles. After proving her own innocence years ago, Robin has made a successful sideline of solving mysteries. When she meets Melissa's mother, Robin immediately accepts the case. With the clock ticking and little to go on, Robin places herself in jeopardy in an attempt to find the truth.

Barbara Black's Robin Light mysteries are pure reading pleasure because of the likable characters, especially the main player and her boyfriend. VANISHING ACT, like the previous tales, includes an engrossing who-done-it and ! a brilliantly but tragically realistic sub-plot starring a troubled teen. This is one series that deserves to stay in the black as fans will feel they were given their money's worth.

Harriet Klausner

Barbara Block's protagonist, Robin Light, engages full time in her "finding missing persons" sideline while her day job as a pet store owner suffers in the eyes of the reader. I mention these two independent facets of Robin's professional life as that is how they remain throughout the story... as two tenuously linked facts. The setting for this missing person mystery was probably its weakest point. I perked up when Robin entered a college campus but, alas, I was thrust back into the stark dregs of city life among the day-to-day mundane problems from which we are all attempting to escape (by reading cozy mysteries). There are some interesting cultural and feminist sub-themes but again, the reader remains on the outside, unempathetic, looking in. The book is readeable, perhaps even more so for women, but one gets the feeling that publisher deadlines effectively prevented the author from developing the theme, the setting and the characters into a really great story.