I am not going to say I disliked this book, but it just didn't grab me, didn’t pull me back to reading, or have me thinking about the characters or story when I wasn't reading. I had to keep reading, though, just to see if they found out where Felix was and who had killed Julie. The detective, Sandy, made the book for me. It was very confusing even when I was three quarters of the way into the book. Lippman's other books until the ending pages. I actually was not swept away as I had been with Ms.

The questions about whether they were together or not surfaced twenty-six years later when they found Julie's body.ĪFTER I'M GONE moves from present to past and from character to character. To cause more heartache and questions after Julie’s disappearance, Felix's wife wonders if she may have gone with him. His mistress, Julie, was his most steady one. He always had a mistress and was rarely home. He left his wife and three daughters, but was his wife really surprised he had left? He never really was with her in the first place. Could both these disappearances have been planned far apart so no one would know the real reason?įelix Brewer disappeared because he wanted to avoid going to jail for his misdeeds. One disappearance and then another ten years later.

And when he does, no one will ever be the same.

Somewhere between the secrets and lies connecting past and present, Sandy will find the truth. And at the center is the missing man Felix Brewer. What he discovers is a tangled web stretching over three decades that connects five intriguing women. 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. 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. Though Bambi has no idea where her husband - or his money - might be, she suspects one woman does: his mistress, Julie. 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.

After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman