After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman and a Giveaway!

After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman
Hardcover, 352 pages
Published: February 11th 2014 by William Morrow

When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old 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 all of his money-might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young 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 in a secluded wooded park.

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 of bitterness, jealously, resentment, greed, and longing stretching over three decades that connects five intriguing women: a faithful wife, a dead mistress, and three very different daughters. And at the center is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten by the five women who loved him: the enigmatic 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.

My thoughts about After I'm Gone ~~ 

After I'm Gone is another fantastic story by Laura Lippman. She is such a great writer, isn't she?

This is a story that has it all; romance and love, betrayal and cheating, lies and murder.

'Of course he still slept with his wife. She was his wife and very attractive, and he was crazy in love with her. Being with Julie wasn't an expression of dissatisfaction with Bambi. It's just that life was better when you ordered a la carte.'

After I'm Gone involves a detective who is working on a murder cold case. As he is working the case we come to know all about Felix and Bambi, and Felix's mistress, Julie, who was found murdered years ago. Laura does a wonderful job of weaving all the character's stories and the past with the present until the reader finally learns what happened to Felix and Julie and how Bambi has coped all those years without her husband.

I thoroughly loved reading this story and it kept me guessing until the very end. It captured me from the start and was a book I didn't want to put down. Um, yeah, I pretty much read it non-stop!

This next part of the story really resonated with me. I think memory smells can be so powerful and I love that I have such great memory smells that take me back to special times.

'She barely remembered her father and worried sometimes that the memories she did have weren't hers, just stories planted by her mother and sisters. But there was a smell, a couple of them. Cigar stores, anything leathery. And a certain aftershave that she sometimes picked up in department stores. No one could have made her remember smells that weren't hers to remember.' 

Now seriously, you need to read Laura's latest. It will not disappoint! And I am already looking forward to the next one!

About the author

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001. Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.

Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.

Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995 but continues to freelance for several newspapers, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller.

Connect with Laura 

Website | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for a copy of After I'm Gone in exchange for an honest review. 

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