The South Seas Vanishings by Patrick Chastel (Author)

ISBN: 9781592090365

Publisher: Carnot Books, March 1, 2004

Hardcover, 192 pages

South Seas Vanishings is an inventive and entertaining piece of fiction. After ten years at sea collecting stories and experiences, Frank comes home to pursue a writing career. After lining up assignments to work on travel articles and children's books, he settles down to focus on his first novel. The theme he chooses is the highly publicized disappearances of people such luminaries as Robert Maxwell and the Countess Francesca Agusta. But Frank's plan quickly goes off track after he meets the exotic Salimata. Soon, his fantasy that a company exists which will help people disappear becomes an obsession. With the help of a former girlfriend, he decides to crack the code of this underground network and use it to further his own schemes. The South Seas Vanishings is a psychological tour de force that explores what can happen when the creative ego goes unchecked. As Frank gradually loses sight of his real needs, be finds himself trapped in a network of betrayal. Told with more than a little humor, The South Seas Vanishings is also rich in the visual imagery that only an author who has himself sailed the globe can evoke.