Mark Greenwood, The Vanishing, Fremantle Press, July 2024, 112 pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760993962
Mark Greenwood calls himself a history hunter. This book is one of a series exploring historical mysteries of lost explorers, shipwrecks, cold cases, or as in this book, a strange sighting of an unidentified flying object.
In 1978 a twenty-year-old commercial pilot from Melbourne, Frederick Valentich reported seeing a cigar shaped object flying below then above him as he was flew solo over Bass Strait between the Cape Otway Lighthouse and King Island. No verifiable wreckage has been found, no body, and no signs of a crash on land or sea. Greenwood follows up on the theories about the disappearance, the possible sightings of other flying phenomena in the skies at that time, and a puzzling report by a farmer who reported he saw a plane with the serial number of Valentich’s single-engine Cessna stuck to a cigar shaped object hovering over one of his paddocks in the Otway region.
The story is indeed extraordinary, though Greenwood keeps as much as possible to facts and reason as he works his way through these strange, distressing events. If this entertaining and well composed book stimulates a wider interest in history and in pursuing research about the past, then it will have met its aims.
Recommended for readers from ten to fifteen and beyond. Teaching notes are available at the publisher’s website.
Reviewed by Kevin Brophy
