Set right before World War II, this book is technically a sequel to The Lady Vanishes, but you don't have to read that book to read this book. Though characters from that book do show up in this book, you won't be lost. Adelaide Blake was being held in a mental hospital against her will. She was put there by a man that may have been her husband. She doesn't remember marrying him. While in the hospital she was experimented on with a drug called Daydream that was meant to make her suggestible but instead causes violent hallucinations. She was the second patient to be experimented on with the drug. No one knows what happened to the first person.
But Adelaide escapes from the hospital and heads to Burning Cove, California and gets a job at a tea shop as a waitress and tisane maker. The shop gets a variety of clientele including famous celebrities and the famous Madam Zolanda the psychic to the stars who insists she come to her show and offers her two free tickets. Not wanting to anger the customer she agrees. Mr. Jake Truett a man who has been coming in every day and has already made a bad fumble of an attempt to ask her out on a date that failed miserably insists that he come with her.
Truett's wife committed suicide supposedly and she was a client of Zolanda who pocketed her diary which contained some incriminating items in it. Zolanda has been blackmailing her family over it and they asked Jake to get it back for them. After predicting a bloody death at her show that night the next day she is discovered by Jake and Adelaide on the ground outside her home as though she had jumped or been pushed off of her roof. A piece of a blue glass bottle stopper was found at the scene by Adelaide who recognized it from the hospital as from a container that held the drug. Zolanda's partner Thelma Legget took off with all of the blackmail material from multiple clients.
Meanwhile, Conrad Massey, Adelaide's supposed husband is desperate to find her because he needs her money and he's pressuring Dr. Gill the head of the hospital to find her. Dr. Gill knows where she is, but he knows that Adelaide had many friends including a PI friend, Raina, who would go looking for her if she disappeared. Dr. Paxton, a "doctor" who invented a diet drink is the co-conspirator to Dr. Gill and he is staying in Burning Cove keeping an eye on things and looking for a way to get Adelaide.
When Thelma tries to sell the blackmail material she winds up dead, but was it a blackmailer or someone part of the Daydream drug ring that killed her? Her and Zolanda were supposed to deliver Adelaide to Dr. Gill. Jake's interest in her was making that even more difficult. This book is great. Just when you think you have it all figured out Quick pulls the rug out from under you. The characters are wonderfully created. I especially liked Raina and hope to see a book devoted to her in the future. She's a tough woman who's been through something pretty bad back east and been made better for it. She's also a very smart and savvy person who can really handle herself and looks after those she cares about. This book is a well-spun story that could have stepped out off the screen of a noir film but is not written in the noir style. I really liked this book and I highly recommend it.
Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Other-Lady-Vanishes-Amanda-Quick-ebook/dp/B074S5CT81/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1533729999&sr=8-1&keywords=the+other+lady+vanishes+amanda+quick
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