BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

A young mother arrives at a nursery school one afternoon to pick up her daughter, but the little girl is not there. The mother’s distraught, of course, but the teachers and the principal just stare blankly back at her. They say they do not know her. They say they have never seen her  daughter. Does the daughter exist? Is the young woman crazy? Or is something more sinister going on?

That’s the basic set up for Evelyn Piper’s novel BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, and it’s the same set up that director Otto Preminger takes for his movie version of her book. Check out my new essay on the book and film over at Criminal Element for a discussion of the different ways these two artists interpret this story.