Book Review: The Disappearing Act | Catherine Steadman

A London actress is visiting Los Angeles for auditions when she becomes entangled with a missing woman and soon risks her career (and life) as she seeks to uncover the truth. This is the sort of psychological thriller that seems straight forward at first, only to become more complicated and twisted until the final shocking chapter. The Disappearing Act is Catherine Steadman at her finest as she proves again that she can bring the drama from theater to her writing with stunning results!

About the Book (Goodreads)

A woman has gone missing
But did she ever really exist?

Mia Eliot has travelled from London to LA for pilot season. This is her big chance to make it as an actor in Hollywood, and she is ready to do whatever it takes. At an audition she meets Emily, and what starts as a simple favour takes a dark turn when Emily goes missing and Mia is the last person to see her.

Then a woman turns up, claiming to be Emily, but she is nothing like Mia remembers. Why would someone pretend to be Emily? Starting to question her own sanity, she goes on a desperate and dangerous search for answers, knowing something is very, very wrong.

In an industry where everything is about creating illusions, how do you know what is real? And how much would you risk to find out?

Have you ever asked yourself what kind of story the story of your life is? […] But now, looking down at the gun in my hands […], I’m not so sure I got the genre right. In fact, I’m not even sure I’m the main character anymore.

Catherine Steadman, The Disappearing Act

Plot and Structure

Narrated solely from the perspective of the lead character Mia Eliot, an up-and-coming actress who has traveled to LA from her home in London for auditions. The structure of the book is deceptively straight forward—there are no alternating timelines or perspectives, and no mysterious narrators. It was such a breath of fresh air to have a thriller that is really built on a single character in a single timeline trying to unravel what is happening to her.

As the book begins, Mia has recently split with her partner George and is going through the stages of processing the break up as George has left her for a younger actress without much closure. Mia has been critically recognized for her portrayal of Jane Eyre and is nominated for a BAFTA award. Capitalizing on her rising stardom (and open to taking a break from her apartment where a mutual friend has come to collect George’s things), Mia’s agent sends her to Los Angeles to audition for several big upcoming film roles.

From the moment Mia arrives in Hollywood, there is an unsettling edge to the trip. LA is glittery and glamorous on the surface, but beneath the shiny exterior there is a gritty underbelly to the industry that she was protected from in London. Everyone wants what someone else has, and Mia muses at one point that no one seems to define what will happen when they get to the top of the ladder.

As Mia starts the audition circuit, she soon discovers that she is regularly interacting with the same general group of actresses who meet the same general type as her. At one audition, Mia befriends another actress named Emily and offers to take care of the meter for Emily’s car for her while she is in auditioning. After her call time is done, Mia realizes that she can’t find Emily and still has her keys and wallet. Leaving a note for her with both the casting assistant and on the car itself and sharing her concerns with a handsome stranger she meets near the car, Mia dashes off to her next audition

By the next day, Mia becomes increasingly worried that something has happened to Emily when she learns that the actress never returned to her car. Meanwhile, Mia has a lead on the role of a lifetime and is doing her best to prepare for what may be the biggest audition of her life. Still, she can’t get Emily out of her head.

When Mia finally does hear from Emily, she’s relieved until she goes to drop off her belongings and realizes that a different woman has shown up claiming to be Emily. Mia can’t imagine why someone would pretend to be Emily, but she’s certain this is a different woman. As Mia looks into what happened to Emily and who the woman was that showed up for her things, more mysterious and troubling events unfold and Mia starts to wonder if she should have never come to LA after all…

Final Thoughts

I found this book to be nearly flawless. As I said upfront, it was such a nice change of pace to have a thriller solely told from one point of view and timeline and still keep me fully engaged. Mia is an interesting character—she lacks a lot of the narcissism and raw ambition of other actresses, but she makes up for it with talent and preparation. It’s clear she is a perfect fit for specific types of roles, and Mia doesn’t seem to be the sort who will do anything to succeed.

Early after she arrives in LA, Mia learns about an actress who took her life plunging to her death off the Hollywood sign after she lost the role of a lifetime to another actress (who later became Kathryn Hepburn). The day after her death her studio called indicating they had a different opportunity for her, but the actress had already passed away. Mia becomes somewhat fixated on this story and on the Hollywood sign, which she begins to refer to as resembling tombstones.

The story is a shadow hanging over the novel and seems to represent the weight that Hollywood puts on success and beating others. Mia often muses that no one seems happy even though they have the success and life that they thought they wanted. Mia is so clearly different from the LA scene, and multiple people wonder why she would offer to help Emily in the first place, let alone try to help find her after she goes missing. It is a stark contrast between the kindness Mia shows to others and those around her who take from others and manipulate them to get ahead. Mia is one of the true purely good people in the book.

I was so engrossed in the story that often I felt surprised when I stepped away from it to realize that I’m not in Hollywood or running the audition circuit. Catherine Steadman has a gift with building not just settings, but scenes. The entire book could be a movie—I could picture everything so vividly without her going overboard with descriptive text.

Without question this is my favorite book I read this year. It feels so pure without losing any of the nail-biting suspense that makes it a top psychological thriller. All the credit to Catherine Steadman for her work on The Disappearing Act!