Actress Mia Eliot has been working in London for years, and things are about to break open for her. Her latest role in the film Eyre (she played Jane) has put her on the map. There is even talk of a BAFTA nomination. So her agent tells her that this is a good time to take her act on the road, to spend some time in Hollywood for the big pilot season, which is when producers film television pilots to try to sell to the studios.
Mia’s agent in England has been in touch with an agent in the states, and they already have several auditions lined up for her, as well as an apartment and a car. All she has to do it pack her bags and fly across the ocean to California.
Mia finds the idea of that easier than she expected when she realizes that her longtime boyfriend has a new acting job that’s about to start in New York City. He hadn’t even told her that he’d been cast in anything new, but Mia realizes that he didn’t say anything about it because it also stars his new girlfriend, a younger actress who is also a social media star. Mia loves the idea of getting out of town for a while, to get away from everyone who knows George and who would want to talk about the breakup.
When she lands in Los Angeles, her drab London life is whisked away. She is given an Audi to drive for the time she’s there. She’s given an apartment to stay in with a parking valet and 24/7 security. The apartment has a view of the whole city, including the iconic Hollywood sign, where an actress once jumped to her death after being rejected for a film role she had wanted.
Mia prepares for her auditions, swims in the rooftop pool, and tires to stop Instagram stalking her ex and his new girlfriend. She nails the first audition and feels confident. She goes to her second audition, and she strikes up an easy conversation with another actor up for the same role, Emily. Emily is worried about her parking meter, thinking it’s about to run out of time, so she tells Mia that she can head in to the audition first. But Mia wants a few more minutes to prepare, so she offers to add money to Emily’s meter while Emily goes in to audition. Emily agrees to this and hands Mia the keys to her rental car and her wallet.
Mia uses Emily’s credit card to feed the meter, and then gest ready to head in to the audition room. She doesn’t see Emily before she goes in. But the audition goes well, in part because she took those extra minutes to prepare. And when she walks out of the room, she still doesn’t see Emily. She looks around, she goes to the car (still in the same parking spot), asks the receptionist—still no Emily. Mia leaves a note at reception with her cell number so Emily can contact her to get her wallet and keys back, and heads to her own car. On the way, she stops by Emily’s car one more time, and that’s where she meets the handsome American who asks her if everything is okay.
He says his name is Nick and that he’d seen her acting strangely from the office he’d been in. Mia explains that Emily had disappeared earlier from the audition and she was wondering what to do with her things. She finally decides to add more time to the meter and head home for the night, hoping to hear from her soon.
Emily spends the next couple of days getting ready for more auditions and meeting up with a couple of friends who were in L.A. She talks to Nick about the situation and he ends up asking her out for dinner. And then finally, Emily contacts her. She apologizes for disappearing and sets up a time to come pick up her keys and wallet. Mia is so relieved, and can’t wait for her to come and gather her things. There’s just one problem with the young brunette actress who comes to pick up Emily’s car keys and wallet.
The woman isn’t Emily.
She looks a little like her. She definitely acts like her. But it’s not the same woman that Mia had met days ago at that audition.
Mia hands over the keys and wallet anyway, not at all certain what to do.
Mia tries to focus on her career, especially for the very important meeting with a producer who wants to talk to her about a movie that could change her life. But she’s distracted. She tries to call the police, and they do a welfare check on Emily, and they report back that they talked to her and she’s okay. But then Mia realizes that she doesn’t know if they talked to the Emily she had met at the audition or the woman pretending to be Emily who picked up the keys from her.
Then her emails start disappearing. Things in her apartment are moved from where she put them. She can’t tell if this is really happening to her, or if she’s somehow losing her mind. Just how far will she have to go to put her mind to ease about an actress she met for just a few minutes one day?
The Disappearing Act is the third novel from Catherine Steadman, and the first one where she relies so heavily on her own experiences as an actor. The Hollywood scenes in this novel feel authentic, like someone really in the know about show business is offering us a peek at the experience of auditioning and preparing and dealing with the drama of the town.
I absolutely loved this novel. I loved that inside look at the life of an actor, but even more than that I was so impressed by Steadman’s ability to create a sense of tension throughout this story, a sense of possible danger at every turn, the anxiety of possible danger from one chapter to the next. There is really not all that much violence in most of this story, but that sense of suspense was so prescient that I had trouble putting the book down. I needed to find out what happened. And I was not disappointed by the ending.
The Disappearing Act is a classy psychological thriller, cashmere and luxury and constant disquiet, and I am all in. Get yourself a big bowl of popcorn and some wine and take a trip to Los Angeles, to find out what it’s really like inside show business, how dangerous it can be just to show up for an audition in a roomful of actors who look remarkably similar to you.
Egalleys for The Disappearing Act were provided by Random House Publishing Group—Ballentine Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
