First published in the US in 1941, ''She Faded into Air'' is a classic British locked-room style puzzle mystery revolving around the "vanishing woman" theme that White was widely celebrated for perfecting during the Golden Age of detective fiction.
The story takes place in London inside Pomerania House—an 18th-century Mayfair mansion converted into flats and offices. Evelyn Cross, a fashionable young woman, enters a fortune teller's flat through its only door and vanishes into thin air while her father and others wait directly outside. Private investigator Alan Foam is hired to crack the impossible disappearance. Days later, Evelyn is found strangled to death, and despite heightened vigilance, an American millionaire's daughter is kidnapped from the exact same location under identical, impossible circumstances.
Ethel Lina White was one of the most popular crime and suspense writers in Britain and the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. She is best known for her 1936 psychological thriller The Wheel Spins, which masterfully adapted into the legendary film The Lady Vanishes by Alfred Hitchcock. Like many of her books, She Faded into Air isolates characters in a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere where reality and illusion blur.
