Bunny Lake Is Missing

Book excerpt: The classic novel of suspense is “a headlong story of nerve-wracking tension, psychological validity and emotional drive” (Oakland Tribune). Blanche Lake is not like the other mothers who come to collect their children at the local nursery school on New York’s Upper East Side. She lives alone, has a job, and has never been married. It’s the first day of school when this story begins, and Blanche is eager to see how her daughter, Bunny, has fared away from home. But her expectant waiting becomes a mother’s most dreaded nightmare: Bunny never materializes. Neither teachers nor students recall the small girl, and soon Blanche is engaged in a frantic search for any trace of her missing daughter. And the worst part is . . . no one believes her. In this fraught and at times freakish tale of suspense, Evelyn Piper takes us deep into the psyche of the 1950s to explore American fetishes, fallacies, and fears around motherhood and sexuality. Blanche emerges as a new kind of heroine—a hard-boiled mom with gun in hand, willing to take any risk to find her missing daughter. “A classic thriller—a riveting revisit to the dark side of the fifties, where the tension beneath the calm surface has an undertow that drags the reader into its grip. Prime pulp—pure pleasure.” —Linda Fairstein, author of The Bone Vault