As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past. An obvious conflict remains unresolved for much of the way, setting up the next chapter in the saga.Ī tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises. The merged stories reach a predictable conclusion. Seagraves and the Camel Club are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game, and Annabelle Conroy is the special guest star. Annabelle arrives in D.C., thanks to an awkward development, along with a new piece of unfinished business. There’s little drama Players act out their part marks fall. After a series of capers out west to build their bankroll, the team heads back east.

She’s assembling her team, eager to settle an old score by taking down Atlantic City’s most notorious and ruthless casino owner. Things are slightly more exciting in Conroy’s world. In the other, the Camel Club investigates the mysterious death of a close friend. In one, Conroy and her team work their way up to their major score. The mysterious death of a rare-books expert at the Library of Congress launches the story, which splits off at first into two different plotlines. Seagraves is killing high-level government officials, and Conroy is putting together the con of the century, with Bagger as the target. Helped by a beautiful grifter, the “Camel Club”-the four-man band of conspiracy theorists-returns to battle a threat to national security.Īnnabelle Conroy is con-artist extraordinaire Jerry Bagger, mobster and mark and Roger Seagraves, master assassin.

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