After I'm Gone: A Novel Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HDPCRGA | Format: EPUB
After I'm Gone: A Novel Description
The acclaimed New York Times best-selling 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 five women he left behind - his wife, his daughters, and his mistress.
Dead is dead. Missing is gone. When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette "Bambi" Gottschalk at a Valentine's Day 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 in 1976, Bambi's comfortable world implodes when Felix, facing prison, vanishes.
Though Bambi has no idea where her husband - or his money - might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie. When Julie disappears ten years to the day after Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she's left to join her old lover - until her remains are discovered in a secluded park. Now, twenty-six years later, 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 of bitterness, jealousy, resentment, greed, and longing stretching over five decades. And at its center is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten by the five women who loved him: the enigmatic Felix Brewer. Felix Brewer left five women behind. Now there are four. Does at least one of them know the truth?
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 10 hours and 34 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Harper Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: February 11, 2014
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HDPCRGA
Dead is dead. Missing is gone.
Inspired by the Salsbury fraud scandal of the 1970s, After I'm Gone explores how the enigmatic Felix Brewer's sudden disappearance echoes through lives of his wife, daughters, and mistress—the five women he loved and left behind. Both a legal thriller and dazzling sashay through a span of decades, Lippman's newest novel is elaborate, emotionally charged, and deeply probing.
In present-day Baltimore, as retired cop Sandy Sanchez reviews a cold case involving the murder of Julie Saxony—Felix's woman on the side—he notices there are discrepancies from every angle, from every testimony, and he can't help but grow intrigued by the seductive, unsolved story of Felix Brewer, his family, and how it could all be connected to a dead Julie Saxony. The novel slips in and out of each eventful decade, from the fateful Valentine's Day of 1959 when Felix and young, fresh-faced Bambi first met, to Felix's unannounced departure and the aftermath thereof, and finally, to Sandy's determined investigation. The toll Felix's desertion takes on Bambi—both financially and emotionally—as well as the way each of his well-fleshed daughters are affected, will raise great sympathy within readers, but will inevitably keep them on edge, itching to find out: how did Felix manage to leave without a trace, and why did he go without seeing to the well-being of his beloved family?
After I'm Gone is such a well crafted, well explicated mystery novel. It combines an elaborate, arduous tangle of lies, secrets, and even sacrifice, with a sharp, fast-paced procession of revelations. These continuous shifts, shocking discoveries, and impending truths never stop surprising you until the very end, which I think is a fabulous ploy.
Felix Brewer runs a lucrative, if not entirely legal, business. Still it keeps him, his beloved wife Bambi, his three daughters, and his stripper girlfriend Julie living well. That is, at least, until one fine day in 1976. Felix is facing jail time for racketeering and knows he can’t handle it so, with the assistance of Julie, he disappears.
Despite the fact that Felix’s family was assured they would be taken care of, there doesn’t seem to be a spare nickel to keep them afloat. The family is convinced that Julie made off with their money. And when, ten years later, Julie disappears, everyone assumes she’s gone to join Felix.
That is, until 26 years after Felix’s vanishing act, Julie’s body is discovered in a wooded area.
Enter Sandy Sanchez, retired detective, failed Cuban restaurateur, and widower with a lot of ghosts of his own. Sandy takes on the cold case, working it the old fashioned way, talking to everyone who knew anyone involved, prodding their failing memories, tugging at their half-truths and innuendos, watching their reactions, and coming to his own conclusions.
And oh, what a tangled web they have all woven. In their desire to protect each other, the family has hidden all sorts of truths from each other. Friends of the family have been weaving their own webs of deception, as well.
The story goes back and forth, between the Felix-in-Town Days, the present day courtesy of Sandy Sanchez, and all those unexplained days in between until, piece by piece, memory by memory, fact by fact, the whole story emerges. For Tess Monaghan fans, there is a cameo appearance by Tess. For fans of Lippman’s stand-alone novels (of which I am one) this one uses classic Laura Lippman storytelling skills to weave a twisted tale.
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