CLAIRE MCGOWAN chats to Paul Burke about her account of 8 missing women in Ireland who disappeared between 1993-98. THE VANISHING TRIANGLE speaks to the tragedy and lasting trauma of their cases but also how much these disappearance/murders reflect on society. Some of these women were probably murdered by people they knew but was there also a serial killer operating at the time?

THE VANISHING TRIANGLE Ireland in the 1990s seemed a safe place for women. With the news dominated by the Troubles, it was easy to ignore non-political murders and sexual violence, to trust that you weren’t going to be dragged into the shadows and killed. But beneath the surface, a far darker reality had taken hold.
Through questioning the society and circumstances that allowed eight young women to vanish without a trace―no conclusion or conviction, no resolution for their loved ones―bestselling crime novelist Claire McGowan delivers a candid investigation into the culture of secrecy, victim-blaming and shame that left these women’s bodies unfound, their fates unknown, their assailants unpunished.
McGowan reveals an Ireland not of leprechauns and craic but of outdated social and sexual mores, where women and their bodies were of secondary importance to perceived propriety and misguided politics—a place of well-buttoned lips and stony silence, inadequate police and paramilitary threat.
Was an unknown serial killer at large or was there something even more insidious at work? In this insightful, sensitively drawn account, McGowan exposes a system that failed these eight women—and continues to fail women to this day.

Claire McGowan grew up in a small village in Northern Ireland, and now lives in London. She also writes women's fiction under the name Eva Woods. You can find out more about Claire and her books at http://www.ink-stains.co.uk

THE VANISHING TRIANGLE CLAIRE McGOWAN

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Paul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network.

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