Watch Me Disappear

Jill Dawson

In Watch Me Disappear the unresolved disappearance of a school friend haunts Tina into middle age. When the throwaway remark "all these girls, Dad would have had a field day" is delivered by her brother at a family gathering Tina is stopped in her tracks. Those present - cousins, nieces, stepsisters and stepdaughters - are all aged 8 to 15.

Gradually it occurs to brother and sister to connect their father with a missing 12 year old from their childhood. His serial infidelities, mostly with barely legal teenagers, which had shamed and embarrassed them while they were growing up, in retrospect begins to look like the tip of a sinister iceberg. Also, the adult Tina now thinks she knows why so many of her schoolgirl friends - without explanation - stopped coming round to play.

It isn't a thriller with a neat resolution. We learn early on that the dad in question is in any case dead. Instead it is a disturbing psychological drama. Impressively done.

Except perhaps not so impressive. Jill Dawson has lifted the entire story from real life. In 1998 Sandra Brown published Where There Is Evil, the devastating true story of how she slowly grew to realise her father was probably responsible for one of Scotland's most infamous unsolved child murders. Review of Where There Is Evil coming up.

Jill Dawson's book lists Sandra Brown's book as a source in a small note at the back of Watch Me Disappear. But is there a good reason to serve up the same disturbing material in novelised form? I don't think so.