The Night We Lost Him

The Night We Lost Him is a domestic thriller by American author Laura Dave, a widely published author who gained significant popularity following her 2021 novel The Last Thing He Told Me. Like The Night We Lost Him, several of Dave’s other works use mystery and suspense to examine familial relationships and complex family histories. Many of Dave’s novels have been bestsellers, and she has a large and loyal readership. Although now primarily a novelist, Dave began her writing career as a journalist.

The Night We Lost Him centers around the mysterious death of Liam Noone, a property mogul with a complex past. As his grown children investigate what they believe is their father’s murder, they uncover a series of long-buried family secrets that force them to finally come to terms with their fraught family dynamics. The novel asks big-picture questions about the impact of inherited wealth, the tension between career and family, and the nature of grief. Through her depiction of the Noone family’s struggles, Dave engages with themes related to secrecy and obfuscation, fractured familial bonds, and the search for individual identity in families that value careers over relationships. 

This guide refers to the 2024 hardcover edition published by Simon and Schuster. 

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss death of a loved one and mention possible death by suicide.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with the death of Liam Noone, a self-made real estate tycoon whose vast network of luxury, boutique resorts has made him a prominent player in his field. He dies under mysterious circumstances on the cliffs next to his small California cottage, and his children find themselves unable to accept the police’s official ruling that his fall was an accident. Liam’s primary focus was always his career, and he struggled in his personal relationships. He was thrice divorced and the father of three children, although relations between Liam; his twin sons, Sam and Tommy; and his daughter, Nora, had always been strained. Sam and Tommy worked for Liam at Noone Properties, but Nora adamantly refused to join the family business and put herself through architectural school. Although architecture and property development are related fields, Nora has had little to do with her father and brothers. 

That changes when Liam dies, leaving Nora his small cottage and his sons the company. Neither Sam nor Tommy expected to be named majority shareholders, and they know that their father recently altered his will. The last-minute changes to his estate plan coupled with Liam having died by falling off a cliff lead Sam to suspect foul play of some kind, and he enlists Nora to help him figure out what happened during Liam’s final moments. They initially seek out the detective in charge of the investigation into Liam’s death. He is not able to offer much help, but as they pore over the files together, even the detective agrees that unanswered questions remain. 

Sam and Nora continue to investigate on their own. They find more questions than answers, and it becomes clear to them that everyone around Liam is hiding something. As Nora and Sam look into Liam’s death, the novel flashes back to Liam’s time in high school, college, and the early years of his career. He grew up in Brooklyn and was especially close to his cousin Joe and a friend named Cory. Liam left Brooklyn after high school, obtained an Ivy League degree, and went immediately into real estate, quickly assuming leadership of a company that specialized in hotels. Joe eventually came on board as his business partner, and the two remained close until the end of Liam’s life. 

Joe and then Liam dated Cory in high school, although it was Liam and Cory who fell in love. She broke up with him when he left for college, and although the two remained in a lifelong quasi-relationship of sorts, she adamantly refused to marry him. Both eventually married other people but never severed their connection to each other. Liam’s first marriage produced Nora, but he left Nora’s mother for Sam and Tommy’s mother. That marriage also fell apart, and Liam married again, although his third marriage was short-lived. He remained friendly with each ex-wife but maintained an emotional distance from his children, each of whom struggled in their own way with their relationship with their father. 

As Sam and Nora begin to uncover more information, a vast network of secrets appears. They learn that their father’s third business partner, Grace, who died about a year prior, was actually Cory, his high school girlfriend and lifelong lover. Always unhappy with her name, she’d changed it when she left her parents’ house. Because they were both married and were business partners, Liam and Grace had kept the nature of their relationship a secret. No one at Noone Properties other than Joe knew about their history. Liam also kept Grace a secret from his children, but the biggest secret that Sam and Nora uncover is that Liam intended to leave Noone Properties to Grace rather than Joe, Sam, or Tommy. The last-minute change to his will occurred after Grace died tragically from a chronic heart condition.

When they learn about this, Sam and Nora initially suspect that Joe (or even Tommy) might have killed their father in anger over his intention to cut them out of company leadership after his death, but the answer lies elsewhere. Grace’s husband, Paul, knew about the nature of Grace’s relationship with Liam and was never comfortable with it. In the early years of their marriage, he hoped that Grace’s love for him would deepen and that her love for Liam would fade, but it eventually became clear that Grace would never love anyone as much as Liam. Toward the end of her life, her marriage was more of a friendship than anything else.

Grace asked for her ashes to be spread at Liam’s California cottage, and Paul had been honoring that wish when he happened upon Liam walking on the small, cliffside path. Liam was supposed to be at an event, and Paul had not expected to find him on the property. The two had a heated argument about Liam’s long-term, clandestine relationship with Grace, and Paul shoved him in a fit of momentary anger. He did not want to kill Liam, but it was raining that night, and Liam slipped on the wet rocks. Paul tells this story to Sam and Nora, and both are struck by how difficult life must have been for Liam, Grace, Paul, and all three of Liam’s wives. Rather than turn Paul in or blame him, they forgive him for his role in their father’s death. With their mystery solved, Nora and Sam resolve to not repeat their father’s mistakes and to focus on their own happiness and the health of their personal relationships.