After I'm Gone

A Novel

By: Laura Lippman

Narrated by: Linda Emond

Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

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?

©2014 Laura Lippman (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishers

Critic reviews

"Despite the murder at its center, this is less a suspenseful whodunit than a masterly novel of character, with secrets skillfully and gradually revealed. Revel in the pace and pleasures of this book." ( Publishers Weekly)
"[S]mart and mesmerizing.... an involving and elegant novel of the psychological ravages of crime." ( Booklist)
"She’s one of the best novelists around, period." ( Washington Post)

Interesting family saga

This was more of a family saga than a thriller, although there was a who-done-it mystery at the core.

Well Written Mystery!!

I enjoyed this novel--and discovered a new author!!

After I'm Gone is a very good novel about the effects and consequences of someone disappearing to avoid prosecution. It follows the lives of those he left behind--lives that are left wondering and without resolution. I thought I knew how the story would end, but I was wrong and pleasantly surprised at the end. Linda Emond did a great job with the narration as well.

I have already added two of Laura Lippman's books to my wish list, and in the meantime, I recommend After I'm Gone to all who love a good mystery!

Now where was I?

When I start a book, I like to finish it, no excuses, but this one was difficult to listen to. The constant back and forth of events was very confusing. I was glad to be done with it.

Absorbing Story to Pass Time

I really enjoyed this book as an accompaniment to running and working around the house. It's not great literature, but the characters are finely realised, the writing is good, the plot good enough, and the narration is nuanced yet unobtrusive.

Excellent book. Kept on listening and ignoring everything else I had to do!

Great book. Great characters. Great reader!!! Loved it
It even has an unexpected twist or two! I liked the way all questions were answered...nothing hanging

Her Best

I've enjoyed all her books, but even tho I figured out the basic mystery near the beginning, that didn't dim my enjoyment of the story even a little. The characters were extraordinarily involving, the storytelling was marvelous, the end satisfying. Oh, and, usual Linda Emond was perfection.

A great new character for Laura Lippman

Great story line. Many of Lippman's attempts to create characters other than Tess Monaghan were never as good as Tess. But Sandy Sanchez is wonderful and so are the other characters, I never guessed the ending. However, she should get rid of the phrase, "he or she is good police" in all her books.

Maybe if I was Jewish ??

Not much mystery here....most of the time I found this book to be like listening to someone talk about nothing for far too long with way too many Jewish references and Yiddish words.
The narration was good and the characters where developed well, but I wouldn't recommend this book for someone who is looking for a good mystery

AFTER I'M GONE

Laura Lippman is a master of mystery, suspense, and imagination. Lippman lures readers into a murder mystery in After I’m Gone. Readers become stuck in Lippman’s threaded tale, like a fly in a spider’s web. Lippman tells a back-story of a cop as an investigator of cold cases, unsolved crimes. The cop is Cuban, a man in his 60s, named Sandy.

Lippman writes a story about a murdered woman, a cold case investigated by Sandy as a consultant for the City of Baltimore. The cold case is 26 years old. The thread of attraction is a picture of a murdered woman in a case file. The murdered woman is a former dancer that falls in love with a married man. The married man is an unscrupulous gambler with ambition equal to the murdered woman’s drive for success.

Lippman’s mystery is who murdered the dancer. Lippman’s suspense is created by the reveal, at the end of the story. Lippman’s imagination traps a reader in a writer’s woven web.

Smalltimore fabulousness.

Could not put this down. Stayed up way too late listening, found all interruptions annoying. Gripping & poignant. A beautiful tribute to Charm City and a delight to those of us who know it.