But on the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi's comfortable world implodes when Felix, newly convicted and facing prison, mysteriously vanishes. Thanks to his lucrative-if not all legal-businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. 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. Spend enough time with the family, and you’ll have your own suspicions about whodunit, and you’re likely to be right, though Lippman throws in some late-breaking curveballs.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. It’s this long-neglected case that ends up in Sandy’s hands, but his efforts to resolve the crime are less compelling than they probably should be. Julie disappears a decade after Felix, and while it’s initially assumed that she joined him in hiding (by everyone except the Brewer women, who refuse to believe he’d choose her), the discovery of her body some 15 years later complicates matters. Though it’s Felix’s disappearance that sets events in motion, and his actions tie the women together, it’s the mystery of Julie that ultimately takes center stage. The older two appear determined to avoid the situation their mother found herself in, and the youngest, who barely remembers Felix, takes the hardest view of all, that men are merely there to be used and then dropped. Julie loves Felix, too, and she makes some bad decisions because of it, but she’s never pitiable.įelix’s daughters are no less affected. She’s stoic and determined, and it becomes especially impressive that Lippman manages to make Julie nearly as sympathetic as Bambi. Bambi, Felix’s bombshell wife, could have done better, but fell for his charm and confidence as a teenager, then spent the rest of her life paying for it.
The Brewer women are a fascinating, tough, smart group, forced to make the best of it without much of a safety net.
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