Laura Lippman, the acclaimed
New York Times bestselling author of
The Most Dangerous Thing, I’d Know You Anywhere, and
What the Dead Know,
returns with an addictive story that explores how one man’s
disappearance echoes through the lives of the wife, mistress, and
daughters he left behind.
When Felix Brewer meets
Bernadette “Bambi” Gottschalk at a Valentine’s Dance in 1959, he charms
her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his
lucrative—if not all legal—businesses, she and their three little girls
live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi’s comfortable
world implodes when Felix, newly convicted and facing prison,
mysteriously vanishes.
Though Bambi has no idea where
her husband—or his money—might be, she suspects one woman does: his
mistress, Julie. When Julie disappears ten years to the day that Felix
went on the lam, everyone assumes she’s left to join her old lover—until
her remains are eventually found.
Now, twenty-six years after Julie
went missing, Roberto “Sandy” Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective
working cold cases for some extra cash, is investigating her murder.
What he discovers is a tangled web stretching over three decades that
connects five intriguing women. And at the center is the missing man
Felix Brewer.
Somewhere between the secrets and
lies connecting past and present, Sandy will find the truth. And when
he does, no one will ever be the same.