Laura Lippman’s latest, Prom Mom (Faber), opens as a teenage girl wakes in the bathroom of her hotel room after the prom. She’s alone, covered in blood, remembering the stomach pains she had the night before. This is Amber, otherwise known as Prom Mom, after the police arrive at her house later and ask her about the newborn a maid found on the floor in room 717. Amber hadn’t even known she was pregnant. “I woke up and the baby was dead,” she tells the detectives, before asking if she can get back her prom dress that she’d left on the bed.
Twenty years on, Amber returns to the Baltimore town where it happened, keen to bump into Joe, known back then in the tabloids as Cad Dad for leaving her alone to give birth. Now he is happily married to Meredith and seemingly the master of his own small world. “She would not try to meet Joe or cross his path. But this was Smalltimore, after all, and it was probably only a matter of time before they encountered each other.”
