CANR
WORK TITLE: Murder Takes a Vacation
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.lauralippman.com/
CITY: Baltimore
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COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 324
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born January 31, 1959, in Atlanta, GA; daughter of Theo (a journalist) and Madeline (a children’s librarian) Lippman, Jr.; married John Roll (divorced); married David Simon, 2006 (divorced, 2024); children: Georgia Ray.
EDUCATION:Attended Northwestern University and Medill School of Journalism.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Tribune-Herald, Waco, TX, reporter, 1981-83; San Antonio Light, San Antonio, TX, reporter, 1983-89; Evening Sun, Baltimore, MD, reporter, 1989-2001; full-time novelist, 2001—.
AVOCATIONS:Eating, drinking, socializing with family and friends, and exercise.
AWARDS:Edgar and Shamus awards, both for best paperback original novel, 1997, for Charm City; Agatha, Macavity, and Anthony awards, all 1998, for Butcher’s Hill; Nero Wolfe Award, 2000, for The Sugar House; best local Sun report, Baltimore magazine, 2001; Anthony and Barry awards, both 2003, for Every Secret Thing; Maryland Author Award, Maryland Library Association, 2004; Romantic Times Award for best P.I. novel, 2004, for By a Spider’s Thread; Gumshoe Award for best novel, 2005, for To the Power of Three; Quill Award, mystery/suspense category, 2007, for What the Dead Know; New York Times notable book of the year distinction, for The Last Place; Baltimore (MD) Mayor’s Award for Literary Excellence; Anthony and Macavity awards, both 2008, for What The Dead Know; eDunnit Award, CrimeFest Awards, 2017, for Wilde Lake; Strand Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel, 2019, for Sunburn; named Grand Master at the Mystery Writers of America’s 2025 Edgar Allan Poe Awards.
WRITINGS
Also contributor to Otto Penzler’s Murderer’s Row.
To the Power of Three is available in audiobook form.
SIDELIGHTS
A journalist who has worked for newspapers in Texas and Maryland, mystery novelist Laura Lippman is well known for her “Tess Monaghan” series, featuring a reporter turned private investigator. The series has been critically well received, and her work has earned her such prestigious prizes as the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Shamus Award, and the Agatha Award. Lippman has since expanded to offering short story and essay collections, as well as picture books.
Asked by a MysteryNet website contributor about the similarities between Tess and herself, Lippman commented: “She’s the person I might have been if I had lost my job in my 20s—a rougher exterior, but a much softer interior, full of self doubts. Like many fictional characters, she gets to say the rude/funny things I would never dare to say out loud. She is brave and principled, two things I like to think I am, but perhaps not to the extent Tess is.” Asked about her favorite book and the authors who influenced her writing, she answered: “Favorite book? Lolita, which does have whodunit elements and quite a few clues sprinkled throughout. In the mystery field, I was heavily influenced by James Cain, Sara Paretsky, Carl Hiaasen, Walter Mosley and inevitably, I suppose, Raymond Chandler. One of my all-time favorites is Phillip Roth. I also read a lot of what I call ‘girl fiction,’ a term I use with great affection and the highest respect for the work of Joanna Trollope, Alice Adams, Gail Godwin, Cathleen Schine and Laurie Colwin, among others.”
Lippman’s “Tess Monaghan” series has received largely positive reviews from critics as well as readers in the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Norway, and Portugal. Elizabeth Pincus, writing in the Voice Literary Supplement, called Monaghan “a dame with the old-fashioned hubris of Phillip Marlowe and a thoroughly modern, unruly mind.” She added: “There’s a pulpy little thrill in finding the best mystery writing around within the gaudy, palm-sized pages of a mass market release.”
Lippman’s journalism background adds verisimilitude to the story of Tess Monaghan. The first book in the series, Baltimore Blues, introduces Tess, a reporter who has been downsized from her most recent newspaper job. When not working at Aunt Kitty’s bookstore, Tess works out by rowing in the Patapsco River. When Rocky, a rowing buddy, pays her a huge sum of money to follow his fiancée, murder ensues, and Rocky is the number-one suspect. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that in Lippman’s debut effort, “hometown and newspaper backgrounds are alive from page one,” but felt that the characters do not become interesting until about halfway through the book.
In the second Monaghan book, Charm City, Tess investigates the suicide of local celebrity and tycoon “Wink” Wynkowsky. As she uncovers deep corruption in the baseball stadium project that Wynkowsky championed, she soon finds out that Wynkowsky’s demise might not have been self-inflicted. She also must figure out how the recent mugging of her Uncle Spike, which left the man in a coma, is related to Wynkowsky’s death. The book offers “shrewd observation, on-target descriptions, believable characters and hilarious one-liners,” noted a Publishers Weekly contributor. In a Strange City, a later book, focuses on one of Baltimore’s most famous phenomena, the annual appearance of the mysterious “Poe Toaster,” who leaves cognac and three red roses on Edgar Allan Poe’s grave on the author’s birthday every January. The appearance of a second Poe Toaster, and the death of one, complicates the literary tradition.
In the 2007 installment of the series, The Last Place, Tess clashes with a predator who prowls the Internet looking for young girls to seduce. After finding date-rape drugs in a suspect’s pocket, she slips him a couple of his own pills, douses him with depilatory cream, and dumps him in a public place, prompting the predator to claim he is the victim. Meanwhile, Tess takes on the task of reopening and investigating a number of cold cases of domestic violence and murder. “The hallmark of Lippman’s finely crafted mystery series has been her acute ability to deliver sturdy tales that push the edges of the traditional private eye novel,” noted Oline H. Cogdill in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and in this one, she “takes an unconventional look at the anger and maliciousness behind domestic violence.” Tess’s stunt lands her in court-ordered anger-management therapy. Cogdill commented that Tess’s “sardonic wit and love of pop culture as well as compassion add texture to this ever-evolving character who has so many more tales to tell about herself and her city.”
By a Spider’s Thread, the next book in the “Tess Monaghan” series, finds Tess on her own when her lover, Crow, spurred in part by some difficulties they have been having, goes to spend time with his mother while she fights breast cancer. As a result, Tess is left to deal all alone with the emotional fallout of having killed a man during the course of her last case, as well as with the details of a new case that crops up soon after. Mark Rubin, a local furrier, approaches Tess because his wife and children have vanished. There is no evidence that they have been taken, but nor was there any reason for his wife to take the children and leave him with no word; he insists the marriage was happy. Tess is skeptical about Mark’s claims, judging him a controlling man based on the fact that he is an Orthodox Jew and that he appears to have kept his wife on a tight rein, running both his home and his business with the same iron fist. She herself has Jewish roots on her mother’s side and so is not completely unfamiliar with this sort of situation. Lippman reveals the path that Rubin’s wife Natalie and their children are on, illustrating her as a somewhat naïve woman whose sheltered life has perhaps left her unprepared for her current situation. Andi Shechter, reviewing for Bookreporter.com, commented on the gradual maturation that Tess has exhibited over the course of the series, concluding that “Lippman writes real characters; you don’t always like them and you may not always sympathize with them—they’re flawed and they’re human.”
The title of Lippman’s ninth Monaghan book, No Good Deeds, refers to the old saying that “no good deed goes unpunished.” The good deed that begins the narrative occurs when Tess’s live-in boyfriend, Crow, brings home an African American teenager, Lloyd Jupiter, who tried to hustle him in a minor tire scam. Tess is not pleased, but as it turns out, Lloyd may know more than he is letting on about the circumstances surrounding the death of federal prosecutor Gregory Youssef. She turns over Lloyd’s information to the press, assured that her source will remain confidential—only to find herself hounded by federal investigators. There is “nail-biting suspense” in the story, remarked Stephanie Zvirin in a review for Booklist.
In Another Thing to Fall, the next installment in the series, Tess’s home town of Baltimore comes heavily into play over the course of the book. Tess is hired to protect twenty-year-old Selene Waites, one of the stars of a television show that has come to film in town. Selene is supposedly being threatened by a stalker, but it soon appears that she is not the one who is in the most immediate danger when a director’s assistant is murdered, beaten to death in a brutal fashion. Tess takes on the case, not only continuing to protect Selene, but attempting to determine who killed the assistant and why—and if anyone else on the cast or crew is at risk. The job is anything but easy, and Tess finds managing the various Hollywood types a huge obstacle to her investigation, with even Selene proving difficult to keep track of while Tess juggles the various aspects of the case. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly found the book not quite up to previous installments in the series, but concluded that “fans will appreciate the author’s usual authentic local color and intricate plotting.” In a review for Booklist, Stephanie Zvirin remarked that “plenty of red herrings and personality clashes make this a delightfully quick, satisfying read.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews declared that “Tess’s latest leaves you fully satisfied but looking forward to next time.”
Lippman said in an interview with Books ‘n’ Bytes website contributor Jon Jordan that she enjoys setting all of her books in Baltimore. “I know parts of Baltimore well, but it’s an extremely complicated city. I’d be skeptical of anyone who claimed to master all its cultures and subcultures, not to mention its history. It’s like a really good song, a standard that a lot of people have covered over the years … say, ‘My Funny Valentine.’ I have my version, and it’s authentic, but not authentic.”
Lippman is also the author of several novels outside the “Tess Monaghan” books. At the beginning of Every Secret Thing, two ten-year-old girls are sent home from a pool party for misbehaving. On the way, they see an unattended baby carriage and decide they must “save” the baby. The child, however, is killed, and when the narrative picks up seven years later, Alice and Ronnie are released from prison and return home to the neighborhood where they committed the deed. As they try to readjust to life, children start disappearing, which turns heated scrutiny on them. The children usually reappear, but when one toddler fails to come back, the neighborhood fears the convicted child killers are at it again. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book “lucid, tight, and compelling.” A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked that Lippman’s “deft handling of this disturbing material is sure to increase the breadth of her readership.”
To the Power of Three explores the topic of the unthinkable reasons that could allow a close friendship to end in bloodshed. Kat, Josie, and Perri are high school students who have been best friends since childhood. One morning, the school and the city are rocked when the three suffer violence in a restroom—Kat is dead, Perri is seriously injured and in a coma, and Josie is shot in the foot, but deeply traumatized. The evidence suggests that Perri was the shooter, but police officers Harold Lenhardt and Kevin Infante do not believe Josie’s story. “Some of the scenes are wonderfully well told, and Lippman, as always, neatly skewers people in power,” commented a Publishers Weekly contributor. Cogdill remarked: “Lippman shows the power of strong characters who richly control the story, and resolutions are often as messy as life.”
The novel What the Dead Know, according to Detroit Free Press contributor Marta Salij, “heralds a leap forward” in Lippman’s work “from very good to great.” The story begins when a woman flees a hit-and-run accident near Baltimore. When the police find her, she refuses to give an ID but claims to be one of two sisters abducted from the city as teenagers thirty years earlier and presumed murdered. The police detective investigating the incident cannot decide how much to trust this woman and must try to find out the truth about her past. The result, Salij wrote, is a thrilling and engrossing novel that shows that “Lippman’s grasp of the mysteries on the page and in human hearts is absolutely sure.” Comparing the novel’s narrative structure to that of film director Akira Kurosawa in Rashomon, Simon King observed in a Bookreporter.com review that “Lippman has shown once again why she wins countless awards for her consummate writing and satisfies eager fans with every new release.” In the New York Times, Janet Maslin hailed What the Dead Know as an “uncommonly clever” novel that is “doubly satisfying. You read it once just to move breathlessly toward the finale. Then you revisit it to marvel at how well Ms. Lippman pulled the wool over your eyes.”
With Hardly Knew Her: Stories, Lippman branches out from her popular “Tess Monaghan” series to produce a collection of short fiction. Each story is a self-contained mystery that shows the darker side of the female psyche while proving to readers that not all murderers are individuals living on the edge or down on their luck. In this collection, Lippman’s killers are soccer moms and college students, women selling real estate in the suburbs and seemingly normal teenagers. These women kill for passionate reasons—because a man has cheated on them or taken them for granted—or simply because they have been insulted passed bearing. Tess Monaghan does appear in this volume, but the murdering women are the true stars of the work. Donna Seaman, in a review for Booklist, opined: “Lippman is a class act and a potent storyteller in these elegant, furious, and blues-blasting dispatches.” A Publishers Weekly contributor declared of Lippman that the “selections in her first short story collection are as intricate and witty as her novels.”
In Life Sentences, Cassandra Fallows is a well-known writer. The story opens at the turn of Cassandra’s writing career, after her third book is not well-received. Cassandra devises a plan to create a fourth book that will propel her into a different playing field. When a New Orleans newscaster reports that a mother may have murdered her child, Cassandra feels like she has a connection, as she went to grade-school with the accused. From there, Cassandra set out on the journey to creating her next book, dredging up old friendships and the history of her life along the way.
Joy Tipping wrote in the Dallas Morning News that “Lippman, normally such a powerful, concise writer, may simply have taken on too much here. Cassandra is white, and her best friends in school are black, so racism and social standing come into play.” Janet Maslin, writing in New York Times, noted: “The denouement of Life Sentences is only slightly less devastating than that of Ms. Lippman’s What the Dead Know. That book depended on her creating one huge illusion. This book is built on a many small deceptions, all of them subtly knowing about the rivalries among teenage girls and their adult counterparts. And in the end Life Sentences also has a point to make about Cassandra as a literary practitioner.” However, Patrick Anderson, writing in Washington Post World Book, revealed that Life Sentences “was also inspired by a real-life story, that of a Baltimore woman whose young son disappeared, whereupon she refused to make any statement and spent seven years in jail for contempt of court.” Anderson concluded that the book “is a strong and vivid story, one that will intrigue many readers—especially, I suspect, women who find echoes of their own lives and friendships in this drama.” Daniel Mallory wrote in the New York Observer: “By novel’s end, when the frayed filaments of plot are fluently braided and bound, Ms. Lippman has once more challenged, realigned and ultimately transcended the boundaries of genre. ‘How many pages could one … life produce if you weren’t a head of state or a general?’ Cassandra wonders. The answer, in Laura Lippman’s case, is ‘not enough.’” Chuck Leddy, writing in Boston Globe commented: “Readers wishing to be transported into an absorbing, murky world of betrayal, self-delusion, and shadowy motivations will find a perfect vehicle in Lippman’s difficult-to-forget Life Sentences. ” Norah Piehl, writing for Bookreporter.com, commented that Life Sentences “will resonate with anyone who has really tried to understand his or her personal origins or with those who have tried to reconnect with old friends who carry deep chips on their shoulders.”
I’d Know You Anywhere, published in 2010, is a stand-alone novel that features Eliza Benedict. One day, the suburban mother of two receives a letter from Walter Bowman, a death row inmate who kidnapped Eliza when she was fifteen. The novel flashes back and forth in time as Eliza recalls the horrible experience of being taken by Walter and witnessing his murder of Holly Tackett, a teenager Walter picked up as he and Eliza drove down the road. Eliza, however, was rescued. Now all these years later, Eliza is hesitant about her renewed contact with Walter, suspecting that there is something very specific that he wants. It turns out that Walter and Barbara LaFortuny, a prisoner advocate, have a plan to spare Walter’s life and they need Eliza’s help. A Publishers Weekly contributor called I’d Know You Anywhere an “outstanding novel of psychological suspense.” Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, noted the author’s “stinging dialogue and arresting evocations of the fog of fear, doubt, and guilt.”
Private investigator Tess Monaghan does make a brief appearance in The Most Dangerous Thing, another stand-alone novel by Lippman. Nevertheless, the novel features former newspaper reporter Gwen Robison. Now the editor of a Baltimore city magazine, Gwen is caring for her aging father and trying to leave behind a bad marriage. Then one evening Gordon Halloran leaves a bar drunk and ends up wrecking his car and killing himself. Gwen, along with Gordon’s brothers Sean and Tim, think there is more to the story. David Ulin, writing for Los Angeles Times Online, noted: “As Lippman tells their overlapping stories, she reveals the connections between them, connections as deep as those of blood.”
Gwen and the Hallorans grew up together in the 1970s Baltimore neighborhood. One time, as Gwen, the Hallorans, and another girl named Mickey are out in the woods, they run into a homeless man they call Chicken George. It turns out that their meeting with Chicken George will have a profound impact on their lives. Following George’s death, the group, which had rarely seen each other since 1979, comes back to their hometown for George’s funeral. Their meeting leads Gwen to spur them on to reexamine their shared secret, the bond they once had, and what it really meant.
“No one explores the delicate interplay between children and the adults they grow into better than Lippman,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Noting that the novel is “spiked with sniper-precise humor,” Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, also called The Most Dangerous Thing a “wise and provocative novel of destructive choices.”
Lippman adds another entry to her “Tess Monaghan” series with her 2011 book, The Girl in the Green Raincoat. First serialized in the New York Times Magazine, the novel finds Tess pregnant and confined to rest as she is suffering from pre-eclampsia. Tess is having a hard time imagining herself as a mother as she sits on her front porch each day and watches a woman in a green slicker walking down the road along with a dog, a greyhound who is similarly attired. Tess ends up taking care of the dog when it appears without its owner. When she finally tracks down the owner, Don Epstein, he claims that his wife, Carole, left him. Tess, however, discovers that the man’s first wife was murdered in a carjacking, and his second wife died of a staph infection. Further raising suspicions is the fact that a girlfriend, Danielle, fell down the steps and broke her neck. It turns out that Danielle was Carole Epstein’s sister. Tess decides that Don is a murderer and sets out to prove it.
“Lippman’s slender tale … brings back her feisty star detective at her most belligerent, most vulnerable and perhaps most appealing,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Joanne Wilkenson, writing in Booklist, remarked: “In addition to the central mystery, Lippman provides witty writing and a running theme on the meaning of family.”
Lippman’s 2012 novel, And When She Was Good, is a fleshed-out reinvention of her award-nominated short story, “Scratch a Woman,” originally published in the anthology Hardly Knew Her. The novel explores the compartmentalized, bifurcated universe of Heloise, an innocuous suburban mom who—to her oblivious neighbors—fades into the background and who is remarkable only for her blandness. Heloise rarely misses school functions and spends her days working as a moderately successful lobbyist. At night, however, she works as an expensive escort. As the novel begins, Heloise has maintained this existence for more than a decade. She has done this by severing herself from meaningful companionship and by keeping her acquaintances at a distance. Slowly, however, her neatly ordered world begins to collapse around her. Dangers begin to encroach on her existence, and Heloise is thrust into a midlife crisis the likes of which few can comprehend.
Reviewers were complimentary toward the fusion of mystery and mainstream fiction Lippman contrives in And When She Was Good. Stephanie Klose, writing in Library Journal, noted that the work is hardly a conventional mystery and argued that “this is really a story about a woman wresting control of her life from the men who done her wrong.” Other reviewers appreciated Lippman’s nuanced, unorthodox approach to examining family dynamics. A critic in Kirkus Reviews wrote that “Lippman studies families with a different eye than her male contemporaries, showing the heartbreaking complexity of life with those you love.”
Lippman’s 2014 release, After I’m Gone, explores the maze of deception generated by a single mysterious man, Felix Brewer. The novel opens with Felix meeting Bernadette Gottschalk at a dance in 1959. He woos the impressionable young woman, capturing her with promises of luxury. He lives up to these promises and gives her a life she could never have imagined otherwise. After a decade-long relationship, however, Felix vanishes, leaving Bernadette alone and unprotected. As Roberto Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective, discovers while doing research on several unsolved murders and disappearances, Felix replicated this pattern multiple times over the period of three decades. Roberto discovers five women connected with the unsavory Felix, some of whom met unfortunate ends as a result of their association. As Roberto works to track down the elusive Felix, he begins to unravel an impossibly tangled web of deceit, intrigue, and greed.
Critics lauded After I’m Gone for many of the same reasons they appreciated its predecessor, And When She Was Good. Many noted that Lippman used the familiar platform of the mystery novel to meaningfully investigate the interior lives of her characters. Michele Leber, writing in Library Journal, contended that After I’m Gone is “less a suspenseful whodunit than a masterly novel of character, with secrets skillfully and gradually revealed.” Adam Woog, reviewing the novel for the Seattle Times, made a similar point, perceiving that “Lippman’s attention is always on the heartbroken and angry Brewer women. Their complex, nuanced reactions to the crime are at the heart of the story.”
Roberto Sanchez appears again in Hush, Hush, working as Tess Monaghan’s new partner. Tess is now the mother of a demanding toddler, and she struggles to balance the demands of work and family life. She has accepted a job from the wealthy and arrogant Melisandre Harris Dawes, who had found notoriety twelve years earlier after being charged in the death of her infant daughter. The child had been intentionally left to die in an overheated car, but Dawes had successfully argued an insanity defense based on her claim to have been suffering from postpartum depression. Immediately after her acquittal she had relinquished custody of her older children, obtained a divorce, and left the country. Dawes is now back in Baltimore, and she has an agenda: to get her daughters back. What is more, she has hired a documentary filmmaker to record her reunion with her children, now teenagers. Dawes has hired Tess to help analyze security needs. The job is a demanding one, especially because Tess is sleep-deprived and insecure about her parenting abilities.
Lippman tells the story through multiple points of view, including those of the older Dawes children; their stepmother Felicia, herself a new mother; Tyner Gray, Dawes’s former boyfriend, who is helping to finance the documentary; and Tyner’s suspicious wife, Kitty. As Tess immerses herself in the assignment, she compares herself to Dawes and begins to feel incompetent in her role as mother. But she eventually sees commonalities with her client as well. Both women have received cryptic threats; both suffer when those close to them are hurt.
Reviewers admired the novel for its juicy plot and its exploration of complex themes. A writer for Kirkus Reviews enjoyed Lippman’s digs at American culture’s obsession with voyeurism and reality TV, and observed that the author “dives deep not only into the ways women tend to question their choices and abilities, but also into whether all mothers, and kids, are a little crazy.” A reviewer for Publishers Weekly gave Hush, Hush a starred review, calling the novel a “searing” story of “what it means to be mad—and more importantly, what comes next.”
The initial inspiration for Lippman’s stand-alone novel Wilde Lake, the author told Mystery People interviewer Scott Butki, was a question: “how would the events of To Kill a Mockingbird change if they played out in a self-consciously progressive suburb in the 1970s?” The book is set in the Baltimore suburb of Columbia, Maryland, and recounts the devastating consequences of a rape accusation. On graduation day at Wilde Lake High School in 1980, a young black man, Davey, is accused by his girlfriend of rape. Infuriated, one of the girl’s brothers stabs Davey, leaving him with permanent spinal damage. Davey’s friend AJ rushes to his aid, and in the skirmish the brother falls onto his own knife and dies. Thirty-five years later, AJ’s sister Lu has become state’s attorney for the county. When she prosecutes a homeless man for murdering a woman found beaten to death in her apartment, Lu discovers that the case has connections to her events that had involved her brother so many years earlier.
It turns out that the murder victim had lived across from the woman who had claimed rape against Davey. This woman is now using a different name, and looks nothing like her former self. As Lu delves further into the case, she confronts uncertainties about her own past, including the truth about her larger-than-life father and her deceased mother. She also wonders exactly how events had gone down that day in 1980, puzzled by how AJ could have emerged apparently unscathed and go on to win fame and fortune as a Wall Street trader and lifestyle guru.
Reviewing Wilde Lake in the Chicago Tribune, Lloyd Sachs described the novel as an “expertly rendered coming-of-age tale” that ultimately is “not so much a crime novel that rises to the level of serious literature as serious literature that rises to the level of great crime fiction.” Booklist contributor Donna Seaman gave the book a starred review, hailing it as a “brainy, witty, social conscious, and all-consuming inquiry into human nature and our slowly evolving sense of justice and equality.”
(open new)In Sunburn, Polly and Adam meet at a bar in small-town Delaware. He is secretly a private detective hired by an insurance company to find her. She also has her own secrets. Their catching feelings for each other complicates their situation. Booklist contributor David Pitt declared that the author “is a popular and dependable writer, and this homage to classic noir showcases a writer at the height of her powers.” Writing in New York Times Book Review, Harriet Lane observed that “people move in and out of the narrative with their own baggage and preoccupations. What they choose to tell us is very subjective and not always directly relevant, and this clamor of voices gives the novel satisfying depth and texture. There’s a sense here that we’re brushing up against many lives, many versions of the truth.” In a review in MBR Bookwatch, Gloria Feit pointed out that “the novel is but the latest where the reader gets to know the characters, to the point where one would like to meet her/him off the page, in real life as it were, and get to know them better, such a wonderful job having been done by this author in their creation.”
Liza Jane & the Dragon is Lippman’s first picture book. Liza Jane lives a good life but decides to fire her parents and start the process to hire new ones. She hires a dragon as their replacement, which leads to a lot of burnt pizza and an isolated life. A Kirkus Reviews contributor said that “the text is awkward and clunky, using an overwhelmingly didactic tone for a story lacking any clear or compelling takeaways.” Writing in School Library Journal, Amy Nolan remarked that the “appealing debut picture book is enriched by the strategic use of color in Samworth’s dreamy illustrations.” Nolan added that “kids will roar at the dragon’s outrageous antics.”
In Lady in the Lake, thirty-seven-year-old housewife Maddie Schwartz abandons her life to pursue her dream of becoming a journalist. When cocktail waitress Cleo Sherwood’s body is found in a lake, Maddie takes to investigating with great enthusiasm while seeing the similarities between their lives. A Kirkus Reviews contributor reasoned that “the story is bigger than the crime, and the crime is bigger than its solution, making Lippman’s skill as a mystery novelist work as icing on the cake.” Writing in Washington Post Book World, Jen Michalski concluded that “Lippman writes with a nuanced understanding of character, and each voice is distinct…. And although some characters don’t seem to add much to the mystery of Cleo’s death, Lippman uses them to show the many layers a reporter must sift through while pursuing a lead. Lady of the Lake is more than a ‘weird love letter to Baltimore newspapers’—it is an earnest and beautiful homage to a city and its people.”
My Life as a Villainess: Essays is a collection of fifteen nonfiction essays that cover everything from Lippman’s domestic life to her career as a writer. She writes about having a positive self-image as she ages, about the age gap with her daughter after adopting her at age fifty, and how motherhood improved her writing abilities. A Kirkus Reviews contributor stated: “Candid and quirky, this book will have special appeal to fans of her crime fiction.” The same critic referred to it as “a wryly observed collection from a reliably good writer.” In a review in Library Journal, Liz French insisted that Lippman’s fans “will gobble up this short collection and beg for more nonfiction from this gifted storyteller.”
In Dream Girl, best-selling novelist Gerry Andersen is bedridden after a fall and begins receiving letters addressed as one of his characters threatening to expose him for stealing their story. A Kirkus Reviews contributor lamented that “all the reveals come after you have figured them out; the murders are played for camp.” Booklist contributor Bill Ott mentioned that “this is both a beguiling look at the mysteries of authorship and a powerful #MeToo novel.” Writing in Washington Post Book World, Maureen Corrigan stated: “Socially conscious (the #MeToo movement makes a decisive entrance into the plot) and packed with humor, ghosts and narrative turns of the screw, Lippman’s Dream Girl is indeed a dream of a novel for suspense lovers and fans of literary satire alike.”
Seasonal Work is a collection of twelve short fiction written between 2007 and 2019. Two of the stories feature her recurring character, Tess Monaghan, while others center on liars, cheaters, and self-centered characters. Booklist contributor Ott reasoned that, “all in all, this is a first-rate collection, an obvious must for the legions of Lippman fans.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor lauded that these “damn fine short stories” are “clever, well-paced, [and] laced with humor and insight.”
With Prom Mom, Amber Glass delivered and then killed her baby on prom night in 1997. While visiting an art gallery in her hometown of Baltimore, she runs into the baby’s father, who led a successful life since graduating. This was in stark contrast to her own, which has been a tormented struggle ever since. Booklist contributor Jane Murphy insisted that the novel is “absolutely brilliant.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor found: “As usual, Lippman creates a convincing portrait of a particular sector of Baltimore.” The same critic called the novel “a character study of pedestrian evil in the Wegmans-and-Peloton class, fascinating in its heartlessness.”
In Murder Takes a Vacation, Muriel Blossom finds a winning lottery ticket and starts her new life by traveling to France. A man she has dinner with is found dead the next day. Another man, whose identity is not what it seems, warns her that she may be in danger, leading Muriel to get to the bottom of what is happening around her. In a review in Library Journal, Emily Bowles opined: “Like the novel’s lottery-winning protagonist, Lippman’s fans will feel like they hit the jackpot with this warm and cozy” story. A contributor to Publishers Weekly figured that “by the time the clever conclusion rolls around, readers will be sad to see this trip come to an end.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor found the novel to be “another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.”(close new)
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Baltimore, May 1, 2016, Gabriella Souza, “Q&A with Laura Lippman.”
Booklist, May 1, 2001, Jenny McLarin, review of In a Strange City, p. 1635; September 1, 2002, Connie Fletcher, review of The Last Place, p. 63; July 2003, Connie Fletcher, review of Every Secret Thing, p. 1846; March 1, 2005, Stephanie Zvirin, review of By a Spider’s Thread, p. 1213; May 1, 2006, Stephanie Zvirin, review of No Good Deeds, p. 34; March 1, 2007, Allison Block, review of What the Dead Know, p. 68; March 15, 2008, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Another Thing to Fall, p. 4; September 1, 2008, Donna Seaman, review of Hardly Knew Her: Stories, p. 55; November 15, 2010, Joanne Wilkinson, review of The Girl in the Green Raincoat, p. 24; May 1, 2011, Marna Rundgren, review of The Girl in the Green Raincoat, p. 50; June 1, 2011, Donna Seaman, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 42; November 1, 2011, Candace Smith, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 36; July 1, 2012, Donna Seaman, review of And When She Was Good, p. 27; November 15, 2013, Donna Seaman, review of After I’m Gone, p. 22; December 15, 2014, Donna Seaman, review of Hush, Hush, p. 30; April 1, 2016, Donna Seaman, review of Wilde Lake, p. 26; December 15, 2017, David Pitt, review of Sunburn, p. 89; May 1, 2021, Bill Ott, review of Dream Girl, p. 32; January 1, 2022, Bill Ott, review of Season Work, p. 43; May 1, 2023, Jane Murphy, review of Prom Mom, p. 34.
Book World, October 1, 2000, review of The Sugar House, p. 8; November 5, 2000, review of The Sugar House, p. 10; December 3, 2000, review of The Sugar House, p. 16; September 23, 2001, review of In a Strange City, p. 13; December 2, 2001, review of In a Strange City, p. 7; December 15, 2002, review of The Last Place, p. 14; September 7, 2003, review of Every Secret Thing, p. 3.
Boston Globe, March 7, 2009, Chuck Leddy, review of Life Sentences.
Chicago Tribune, February 19, 2015, Carol Memmott, review of Hush, Hush; May 4, 2016, Lloyd Sachs, review of Wilde Lake.
Dallas Morning News, March 15, 2009, Joy Tipping, review of Life Sentences.
Detroit Free Press, April 25, 2007, Marta Salij, review of What the Dead Know.
Drood Review of Mystery, July 1, 2000, review of The Sugar House, p. 19; September 1, 2000, review of The Sugar House, p. 6.
Economist, May 12, 2001, review of The Sugar House, p. 1.
Entertainment Weekly, September 5, 2003, Caroline Kepnes, review of Every Secret Thing, p. 80; March 16, 2007, Jennifer Reese, review of What the Dead Know, p. 72.
Globe & Mail, September 3, 2011, Margaret Cannon, review of The Most Dangerous Thing.
Guardian (London, England), July 26, 2023, Lauren Mechling, author interview.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2002, review of The Last Place, p. 1080; July 1, 2003, review of Every Secret Thing, p. 878; February 1, 2007, review of What the Dead Know, p. 103; January 15, 2008, review of Another Thing to Fall; December 1, 2010, review of The Girl in the Green Raincoat; August 1, 2011, review of The Most Dangerous Thing; September 1, 2012, review of And When She Was Good,; November 1, 2013, review of After I’m Gone; December 1, 2014, review of Hush, Hush; March 15, 2016, review of Wilde Lake; August 1, 2018, review of Liza Jane & the Dragon; April 15, 2019, review of Lady in the Lake; March 15, 2020, review of My Life as a Villainess: Essays; April 15, 2021, review of Dream Girl; January 15, 2022, review of Season Work; June 1, 2023, review of Prom Mom; August 1, 2025, review of Murder Takes a Vacation.
Kliatt, November 1, 2003, Nola Theiss, review of The Sugar House, p. 53; May 1, 2005, Francine Levitov, review of By a Spider’s Thread, p. 52; September 1, 2006, Francine Levitov, review of No Good Deeds, p. 55; January 1, 2008, Melody Moxley, review of What the Dead Know, p. 42.
Library Journal, September 15, 2000, Wilda Williams, review of The Sugar House, p. 119; September 15, 2002, Michele Leber, review of The Last Place, p. 97; July 2003, Michele Leber, review of Every Secret Thing, p. 123; August, 2004, Michele Leber, review of By a Spider’s Thread, p. 60; July 1, 2005, Amy Brozio-Andrews, review of To the Power of Three, p. 69; March 1, 2007, B. Allison Gray, review of No Good Deeds, p. 122; March 15, 2007, Amy Brozio, review of What the Dead Know, p. 61; November 15, 2007, Barbara Valle, review of What the Dead Know, p. 88; December 1, 2007, Carol Stern, review of Charm City, p. 166; February 15, 2008, Stacy Alesi, review of Another Thing to Fall, p. 93; September 1, 2008, Michele Leber, review of Hardly Knew Her, p. 124; September 1, 2009, Joyce Kessel, review of Life Sentences, p. 78; August, 2010, Amy Brozio-Andrews, review of I’d Know You Anywhere, p. 70; March 15, 2011, Barbara Hoffert, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 100; April 1, 2011, Mary Knapp, review of The Girl in the Green Raincoat, p. 58; July 2011, Amy Hoseth, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 72; December 1, 2011, Ilka Gordon, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 7; August 1, 2012, Stephanie Klose, review of And When She Was Good, p. 85; November 15, 2013, Michele Leber, review of After I’m Gone, p. 85; April 1, 2020, Liz French, review of My Life as a Villainess, p. 96; March 1, 2025, Emily Bowles, review of Murder Takes a Vacation, p. 85.
Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2015, Paula L. Woods, review of Hush, Hush.
MBR Bookwatch, March 1, 2018, Gloria Feit, review of Sunburn.
Miami Herald, March 21, 2007, Connie Ogle, review of What the Dead Know.
Mystery Reader, September 16, 2001, review of The Sugar House.
New York Observer, February 2, 2010, Daniel Mallory, review of Life Sentences.
New York Times, June 26, 2005, Marilyn Stasio, review of To the Power of Three; April 5, 2007, Janet Maslin, review of What the Dead Know; March 12, 2009, Janet Maslin, review of Life Sentences, p. 7.
New York Times Book Review, October 14, 2001, Marilyn Stasio, review of In a Strange City, p. 26; December 2, 2001, review of In a Strange City, p. 74; October 20, 2002, Marilyn Stasio, review of The Last Place, p. 25; September 4, 2011, Marilyn Stasio, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 23; February 13, 2014, author interview; February 11, 2018, Harriet Lane, review of Sunburn, p. 13L; July 25, 2019, Stephen King, review of Lady in the Lake.
Orlando Sentinel, October 17, 2003, Nancy Pate, review of The Last Place.
O, the Oprah Magazine, September 1, 2011, Karen Holt, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 167.
Publishers Weekly, December 30, 1996, review of Baltimore Blues, p. 64; August 18, 1997, review of Charm City, p. 89; June 1, 1998, review of Butcher’s Hill, p. B48; July 26, 1999, review of In Big Trouble, p. 88; August 7, 2000, review of The Sugar House, p. 79; September 23, 2002, review of The Last Place, p. 54; July 7, 2003, review of Every Secret Thing, p. 49; July 5, 2004, Tracy Cochran, author profile, p. 29; May 16, 2005, review of To the Power of Three, p. 35; March 6, 2006, review of Baltimore Noir, p. 49; May 15, 2006, review of No Good Deeds, p. 49; January 22, 2007, review of What the Dead Know, p. 156; May 28, 2007, review of What the Dead Know, p. 57; January 14, 2008, review of Another Thing to Fall, p. 37; August 25, 2008, review of Hardly Knew Her, p. 50; August 2, 2010, review of I’d Know You Anywhere, p. 31; November 1, 2010, review of The Girl in the Green Raincoat, p. 26; June 1, 2011, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 42; July 11, 2011, Jordan Foster, author interview, p. 34; July 16, 2012, review of And When She Was Good, p. 148; December 23, 2013, review of After I’m Gone, p. 35; December 8, 2014, review of Hush, Hush, p. 57; March 21, 2016, review of Wilde Lake, p. 55; April 14, 2025, review of Murder Takes a Vacation, p. 32.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, October 1, 2015, Gloria Feit, review of Hush, Hush.
School Library Journal, May 1, 2007, Jenny Gasset, review of What the Dead Know, p. 174; November 1, 2016, Jake Pettit, review of Wilde Lake, p. 108; November 1, 2018, Amy Nolan, review of Liza Jane & the Dragon, p. 61.
Seattle Times, February 23, 2014, Adam Woog, review of After I’m Gone.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 21, 2001, Oline H. Cogdill, review of In a Strange City; October 25, 2002, Oline H. Cogdill, review of The Last Place; June 29, 2005, Oline H. Cogdill, review of To the Power of Three.
Spectator, August 9, 2008, Andrew Taylor, review of Another Thing to Fall, p. 32.
Times Literary Supplement, January 5, 2001, review of The Sugar House, p. 21; June 8, 2007, Natasha Cooper, review of What the Dead Know, p. 23.
USA Today, July 6, 2006, Carol Memmott, review of No Good Deeds, p. 5; March 29, 2007, Carol Memmott, review of What the Dead Know, p. 5; September 15, 2011, Carol Memmott, review of The Most Dangerous Thing, p. 4.
Voice Literary Supplement, October 1, 1999, Elizabeth Pincus, author profile, p. 135.
Voice of Youth Advocates, December 1, 2001, review of The Sugar House, p. 333; December 1, 2002, review of In a Strange City, p. 336; December 1, 2004, Laura Lippman, review of By a Spider’s Thread, p. 371.
Washington Post, February 22, 2015, Maureen Corrigan, review of Hush, Hush; April 27, 2016, Patrick Anderson, review of Wilde Lake.
Washington Post Book World, March 9, 2009, Patrick Anderson, review of Life Sentences; February 8, 2014, Jonathan Yardley, review of After I’m Gone; February 22, 2018, Patrick Anderson, review of Sunburn; July 22, 2019, Jen Michalski, review of Lady in the Lake; July 12, 2021, Maureen Corrigan, review of Dream Girl; August 3, 2023, Eliza Nellums, review of Prom Mom.
Washington Times, February 23, 2015, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Hush, Hush.
Xpress Reviews, March 20, 2009, Amy Brozio-Andrews, review of Life Sentences; December 10, 2010, Michele Leber, review of The Girl in the Green Raincoat; May 6, 2016, Liz French, review of Wilde Lake.
ONLINE
All Things Considered, https://www.npr.org/ (July 25, 2019), Mary Louise Kelly, “Real Disappearances Are the Premise for Laura Lippman’s ‘Lady In The Lake.'”
Baltimore Sun Online, http://www.baltimoresun.com/ (February 10, 2017), Janene Holzberg, “Lippman Taps Her Own Columbia Experience in Novel, Wilde Lake.”
BookPage, http://www.bookpage.com/ (July 20, 2007), Jay MacDonald, “Reality Check: Flawed Characters Keep Laura Lippman Honest”; (February 10, 2017), Bruce Tierney, review of Wilde Lake.
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (July 20, 2007), interview with Laura Lippman; Ava Dianne Day, reviews of The Last Place and Every Secret Thing; Andi Schechter, reviews of By a Spider’s Thread and To the Power of Three; Simon King, review of What the Dead Know; Norah Piehl, review of Life Sentences.
Books ‘n’ Bytes, http://www.booksnbytes.com/ (April 4, 2003), Jon Jordan, interview with Lippman.
BSC Review, http://www.bscreview.com/ (March 4, 2010), Victor Gischler, interview with Lippman.
CrimeReads, https://crimereads.com/ (February 3, 2022), Eli Cranor, “Shop Talk: Laura Lippman Is a Morning Writer (but the Walk Comes First);” (July 21, 2022), Rick Pullen, “My First Thriller: Laura Lippman.”
Freedom, https://freedom.to/ (August 14, 2019), Alexandra Dempsey, “Laura Lippman: Finding the Focus to Write Crime Mysteries.”
Garden & Sun, https://gardenandgun.com/ (September 20, 2023), Kinsey Gidick, “Murder, She Wrote: Catching Up with the South’s Agatha Christie, Laura Lippman.”
Laura Lippman website, http://www.lauralippman.com (August 25, 2025).
Los Angeles Times Online, http://www.latimes.com/ (August 21, 2011), David Ulin, review of The Most Dangerous Thing.
MysteryNet, http://www.mysterynet.com/ (February 3, 2000), interview with Lippman.
Mystery People, https://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/ (February 10, 2017), Scott Butki, “Q&A with Laura Lippman.”
Shots: The Crime & Thriller Ezine, http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/ (July 20, 2007), Ayo Onatade, “Interview with Laura Lippman.”
Spinetingler, http://www.spinetinglermag.com/ (July 20, 2007), Sandra Ruttan, author interview.
Writer’s Digest, https://www.writersdigest.com/ (June 17, 2025), Robert Lee Brewer, author interview.
Laura’s Bio
Photo of Laura Lippman
Photo by Jan Cobb
Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2025. Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.
Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.
Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995 but continues to freelance for several newspapers, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller.
FAQ
Do your books need to be read in order?
That depends on the reader. If you normally read series in order — then, yes. If you’re comfortable with moving around in time and encountering the occasional spoiler — then, no. Click on the All Books in Order to find a full list of titles, listed in the order they were written. (This list does not include short story anthologies, which can be found here.)
How can I get you to appear at my bookstore, library or other speaking event?
For book tour appearances, please contact Sharyn Rosenblum at William Morrow. For speaking events, please contact Jessica Fee at the Greater Talent Network.
Will you waive your speaking fee under any circumstances?
I donate my public speaking fees to my local library system, the Enoch Pratt, and other nonprofits, so I prefer not to waive them. However, I do not charge to speak at events that fall within my book tour. The tour window is the month after a book’s publication date. If your event falls within that month, please contact my publisher.
Do you donate items to auctions?
Because of the volume of requests, I cannot donate signed books or other items, and cannot even respond to most requests. However, I can make an exception when someone purchases a book and sends it to me for my signature, with paid return postage. However, to do that, I need to set up an account at a local postal services store.
Where can I get a personal copy of my book signed?
Since Mystery Loves Company closed its Baltimore store, this has gotten trickier. Please indulge me as I try to work out a solution.
Are the restaurants in the Tess books real?
If Tess likes the food, the restaurant is real. If the food is bad, the place exists only in my imagination. Bear in mind that Tess’s shellfish allergy keeps her from eating some signature dishes at some of Baltimore’s finest restaurants.
What about the Beacon-Light, aka the Blight? Is that based on The (Baltimore) Sun?
Obviously not. The Sun is on Calvert Street, while The Blight is on Saratoga Street.
Is Tess your alter ego?
The relationship is more like Patty and Cathy on the old Patty Duke Show. I’m Cathy, the cultured one who has traveled widely, while Tess has only seen the sights a girl can see from O’Donnell Heights.
When/how do you write?
I wrote my first seven books while working fulltime at The Sun. I spend most weekday mornings at a local coffeehouse, intent on writing at least 1,000 words. At that pace, I can usually finish a first draft in four-five months, which leaves time for quite a bit of redrafting. The other hours in the day may involve more writing, research, or ancillary tasks.
Do you have a newsletter or a message board?
Best place to find me these days is on Facebook.
Did you do this site yourself?
No, the site was designed by Beth Tindall of CincinnatiMedia, who sends me traffic and search statistics on a regular basis. (So watch what terms you search for because it’s seriously freaking me out.)
Will you put a “Tess Tour of Baltimore” on this site?
There are 2 links on this site that that may interest you — The Streets of Baltimore (Bouchercon 2025 primer) and Tessworld (Baltimore tour).
Can I get in touch with David Simon via your email link? Will you forward email to him or anyone else associated with The Wire?
No.
OK, I’ve read the FAQs, but surely you’ll make an exception to some of these hard-and-fast rules once I explain -
No, no exceptions.
For all the verbiage on this site, there’s a surprising lack of hard facts. Are you married? Do you have children? What personal information are you willing to share?
I live in Baltimore. I am not a natural blonde.
Laura Lippman
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Laura Lippman
Lippman at the 2015 National Book Festival
Lippman at the 2015 National Book Festival
Born January 31, 1959 (age 66)
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Occupation Author
Alma mater Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Wilde Lake High School
Subject Detective fiction
Notable awards Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Barry, Macavity, Strand and Shamus
Spouse David Simon
(m. 2006; div. 2024)
Children 1
Website
www.lauralippman.com
Laura Lippman (born January 31, 1959) is an American journalist and author of over 20 detective fiction novels.[1] Her novels have won multiple awards, including an Agatha Award, seven Anthony Awards, two Barry Awards, an Edgar Award, a Gumshoe Award, a Macavity Award, a Nero Award, two Shamus Awards, and two Strand Critics Award.
Biography
Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Columbia, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman, Jr., a writer at The Baltimore Sun, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, now retired as a school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System.[2] Her paternal grandfather was Jewish, and the remainder of her ancestry is Scots-Irish.[3][4] Lippman was raised Presbyterian.[5] She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High School It's Academic team. She also participated in several dramatic productions, including Finian's Rainbow, The Lark, and Barefoot in the Park. She graduated from Wilde Lake High School in 1977.[6]
Lippman is a former reporter for the now defunct San Antonio Light and The Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter turned private investigator. Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. What the Dead Know (2007), was the first of her books to make the New York Times Best Seller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award.
In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman has written works independent of that character. Her novel Every Secret Thing was adapted as a 2014 movie starring Diane Lane. Her novel Lady in the Lake was adapted as a limited series for Apple TV.[7]
Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons.[8] In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside Baltimore. In January 2007, Lippman taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College. In March 2013, she was the guest of honor at Left Coast Crime.
Representation in other media
The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books, In a Strange City, in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. Lippman appeared in a scene in the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom.[9]
Personal life
In 2000, she began dating and soon living with David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter. He became the creator and an executive producer of the HBO series The Wire (which premiered in 2002). They lived in a "narrow brick row house", in Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood.[10][11]
In 2006, Lippman married Simon in a ceremony officiated by filmmaker John Waters.[12][13] She had been married to another man for seven years, which ended in a "difficult divorce." Simon had been married twice before.[10] Lippman and Simon have a daughter who was born in 2010.[14]
Lippman and Simon separated in 2020, divorcing in 2024.[15] The two continue to co-parent their daughter.[16]
Awards
What the Dead Know was a New York Times Best Seller.[17]
In 2014, Lippman won the inaugural Pinckley Prize for a Distinguished Body of Work.[18]
Awards for Lippman's writing
Year Title Award Result Ref.
1998 Baltimore Blues Shamus Award for Best First Novel Finalist [19]
Charm City Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original Finalist [19]
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Paperback Original Won [19]
Macavity Award for Best First Novel Finalist [19][20]
Shamus Award for Best Paperback Original Won [19][21]
1999 Butchers Hill Agatha Award for Best Novel Won [19][22][23]
Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original Won [19][22][24]
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Paperback Original Finalist [19][22]
Macavity Award for Best Novel Finalist [19][20][22]
Shamus Award for Best Paperback Original Finalist [19][22]
In Big Trouble Agatha Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
2000 Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original Won [19][24]
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Paperback Original Finalist [19]
Shamus Award for Best Paperback Original Won [19][21]
The Sugar House Nero Award Won [19]
2003 Every Secret Thing Hammett Prize Finalist [19]
The Last Place Shamus Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
2004 By a Spider’s Thread Agatha Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
Every Secret Thing Anthony Award for Best Novel Won [19][24]
Barry Award for Best Novel Won [19]
2005 By a Spider’s Thread Anthony Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
2006 To the Power of Three Anthony Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
Gumshoe Award for Best Mystery Won
2007 No Good Deeds Anthony Award for Best Novel Won [19][24]
2008 "Hardly Knew Her" from Dead Man's Hand Anthony Award for Best Short Story Won
What the Dead Know Anthony Award for Best Novel Won [19][24]
Barry Award for Best Novel Won [19]
Gold Dagger Award Finalist [19]
Macavity Award for Best Novel Won [19][20][25]
2009 Life Sentences Strand Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel Finalist [26]
“Scratch a Woman” in Hardly Knew Her Macavity Award for Best Short Story Finalist [20]
2011 I’d Know You Anywhere Anthony Award for Best Novel Finalist [19][27]
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
2015 After I'm Gone Anthony Award for Best Novel Won [19][24]
Strand Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel Won [28]
2017 Wilde Lake Anthony Award for Best Novel Finalist [19][29]
Barry Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel Finalist [19][20][30]
2019 Sunburn Anthony Award for Best Novel Finalist [19][31][32]
Strand Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel Won [33][34]
2020 Lady in the Lake Anthony Award for Best Novel Finalist [19]
Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel Finalist [19][35][36]
Strand Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel Finalist [37][38]
2021 Dream Girl Strand Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel Finalist [39]
2022 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Finalist [19][40]
Publications
Tess Monaghan series
Baltimore Blues (1997). ISBN 0380788756
Charm City (1997). ISBN 0380788764
Butchers Hill (1998). ISBN 0380798468
In Big Trouble (1999). ISBN 0380798476
The Sugar House (2000). ISBN 0380978172
In a Strange City (2001). ISBN 0380978180
The Last Place (2002). ISBN 0380978199
By A Spider's Thread (2004). ISBN 0060506695
No Good Deeds (2006). ISBN 978-0060570729
Another Thing to Fall (2008). ISBN 978-0061128875
The Girl in the Green Raincoat (2011). ISBN 978-0061938368
Hush, Hush (2015). ISBN 978-0062083425
Short stories
"Orphans' Court" (1999) (short story in First Cases: Volume 3, edited by Robert J. Randisi)
"Ropa Vieja" (2001) (short story in Murderers Row, edited by Otto Penzler)
"The Shoeshine Man's Regrets" (2004) (short story in Murder and All That Jazz, edited by Robert J. Randisi)
Standalone works
Novels
Every Secret Thing (2004). ISBN 0060506679
To The Power of Three (2005). ISBN 0060506725
What the Dead Know (2007). ISBN 978-0061128851 (Little Sister in the UK)
Life Sentences (2009). ISBN 978-0061128899
I'd Know You Anywhere (2010). ISBN 978-0061706554 (Don't Look Back in the UK)
The Most Dangerous Thing (2011). ISBN 978-0061706516
And When She Was Good (2012). ISBN 978-0061706875
After I'm Gone (2014). ISBN 978-0062083395
Wilde Lake (2016). ISBN 978-0062083456
Sunburn (2018). ISBN 978-0062389923
Lady in the Lake (2019). ISBN 978-0062390011
Dream Girl: A Novel (2021). ISBN 978-0063204652
Prom Mom (2023). ISBN 9780062998064
Murder Takes A Vacation (2025). ISBN 978-0062998101
Short story collections
Baltimore Noir (2006). ISBN 978-1888451962 (editor and contributed one story)[41]
Hardly Knew Her: Stories (2008). ISBN 978-0061584992
Seasonal Work: Stories (2022). ISBN 978-0063000032
Memoir
Summer of Fall (2023). ISBN 978-1094455402 (Scribd original)
Laura Lippman
USA flag (b.1959)
Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working full-time and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001.
Awards: Edgar (2025), CrimeFest (2024), Anthony (2015), Macavity (2008) see all
Genres: Mystery
New and upcoming books
June 2025
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Murder Takes a Vacation
(Mrs Blossom Mystery, book 1)
Series
Tess Monaghan
1. Baltimore Blues (1997)
2. Charm City (1997)
3. Butchers Hill (1998)
4. In Big Trouble (1999)
5. The Sugar House (2000)
6. In A Strange City (2001)
7. The Last Place (2002)
8. By a Spider's Thread (2004)
9. No Good Deeds (2006)
10. Another Thing to Fall (2008)
11. The Girl in the Green Raincoat (2011)
12. Hush Hush (2012)
The Tess Chronicles (2018)
Tess Monaghan: A Mysterious Profile (2022)
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Mrs Blossom Mystery
1. Murder Takes a Vacation (2025)
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Novels
Every Secret Thing (2003)
To the Power of Three (2005)
What the Dead Know (2007)
aka Little Sister
Life Sentences (2009)
I'd Know You Anywhere (2010)
aka Don't Look Back
The Most Dangerous Thing (2011)
aka The Innocents
And When She Was Good (2012)
After I'm Gone (2014)
Wilde Lake (2016)
Sunburn (2018)
Lady in the Lake (2019)
Dream Girl (2021)
Prom Mom (2023)
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Collections
Hardly Knew Her (2008)
The Accidental Detective (2012)
Femme Fatale and Other Stories (2012)
Different for Girls (2018)
Nasty Girls (2018)
The Weaker Sex (2018)
Seasonal Work (2022)
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Novellas and Short Stories
Arm and the Woman (2009)
The Babysitter's Code (2009)
Black-Eyed Susan (2009)
The Crack Cocaine Diet (2009)
Dear Penthouse Forum (2009)
Easy as A-B-C (2009)
Femme Fatale (2009)
A Good Fuck Spoiled (2009)
Honor Bar (2009)
One True Love (2009)
Pony Girl (2009)
Ropa Vieja (2009)
Scratch a Woman (2009)
The Shoeshine Man's Regrets (2009)
What He Needed (2009)
Five Fires (2014)
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Series contributed to
Akashic Noir
Baltimore Noir (2006)
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Bibliomysteries / Death Sentences
The Book Thing (2012)
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Best American Mystery Stories
The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 (2014) (with Otto Penzler)
aka The Best American Mystery Stories: Volume 17
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Hush
3. Slow Burner (2020)
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Mysterious Profiles
Tess Monaghan: A Mysterious Profile (2022)
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Liza Jane & the Dragon (2018) (with Kate Samworth)
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My Life as a Villainess (2020)
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Hints of Heloise (2012)
Laura Lippman: On Developing Good Writing Habits and Routines
In this interview, bestselling author Laura Lippman discusses how a favorite film helped inspire her new mystery novel, Murder Takes a Vacation.
Robert Lee Brewer
Published Jun 17, 2025 5:00 AM EDT
Since Laura Lippman’s debut, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the “essential” crime writers of the last 100 years. Stephen King called her “special, even extraordinary,” and Gillian Flynn wrote, “She is simply a brilliant novelist.” Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than 25 languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her teenager.
Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman | Photo by Vickie Gray Vickie Gray
In this interview, Laura discusses how a favorite film helped inspire her new mystery novel, Murder Takes a Vacation, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Laura Lippman
Literary agent: Vicky Bijur
Book title: Murder Takes a Vacation
Publisher: William Morrow
Release date: June 17, 2025
Genre/category: Mystery/Thriller
Previous titles: Prom Mom, Lady in the Lake, the Tess Monaghan series
Elevator pitch: A widow at a crossroads treats herself to her dream vacation in France, only to be drawn into the deadly search for an antique statue of a bird.
Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]
What prompted you to write this book?
In 2022, I had just finished writing a dark book about a love triangle during the early months of COVID. One day, I was watching Charade, an old favorite of mine, and I thought, What if the woman was older than the man? What if their relationship wasn’t necessarily a romance? The first line—"Mrs. Blossom had never been upgraded in her life.”—came very quickly. The rest, not so much.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I’m under contract and work pretty steadily. That said, this book took about 20 months from concept to publication.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I wouldn’t say there were any surprises—I’ve been doing this since 1997. But publishing has changed quite a bit and I’m trying to keep up, find new ways to find new readers.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I think the surprise was that it never gets any easier. But also—yes, a light book can be much harder to write than a dark one.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope the book works on two levels—as a satisfying mystery, but also as a meditation on what it means for a woman to grow old in our culture.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
People say I’m disciplined, but I think I’ve just developed good habits and routines. There’s a lot to be said for just showing up at your desk every morning!
Murder, She Wrote: Catching Up with the South’s Agatha Christie, Laura Lippman
The prolific author talks about setting her true crime novels in Baltimore, claiming her Southern identity, and how the pandemic inspired her latest caper about a prom gone wrong
By Kinsey Gidick
September 20, 2023
Photo: Vickie Gray
Laura Lippman.
It takes Laura Lippman a minute to tally all the books she’s written. “I always forget. Let me see,” says the crime writer via Zoom, counting on her fingers. “Twenty-nine, and I just finished my latest manuscript, so thirty? Yes, thirty.”
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Considering Lippman’s first book, Baltimore Blues, came out twenty-six years ago, that’s an impressive output. Then again the former journalist, who worked for the now-defunct San Antonio Light and The Baltimore Sun covering politics and the police report beat, appreciates a deadline.
Long before embarking on her journalism career, Lippman wanted to be a novelist. “I did better in my creative writing classes in college than I did in my journalism courses,” she admits. But she needed a paycheck, so she worked in newsrooms and woke up early every morning to cram in creative writing. “I broke it down—like if I wrote three pages a day, that’s a novel in three months,” she says. And her discipline worked. Her twelve-book series about Baltimore private eye Tess Monaghan took off. But even after she pivoted to standalone works, allowing her the freedom to pick any backdrop, Charm City has remained a central character.
It’s the setting for her most recent release, Prom Mom, a psychological suspense novel that follows protagonist Amber Glass from a high school dance—where she finds herself abandoned and bloody in a hotel bathroom—to adulthood. Through flashbacks the reader learns what happened that fateful night and beyond: After being accused of killing her prom-night-born baby (and doing time in juvenile detention), Amber escaped her hometown for New Orleans. Now, months before the start of the pandemic, she’s returned to Baltimore thanks to a surprise inheritance, and it’s not long before her prom date reemerges too. Unlike Amber, who has spent decades running from a ruined reputation, Joe is still the same Teflon kid of their youth, impervious to bad press and living a seemingly perfect life in the Baltimore suburbs with his plastic surgeon wife.
“I’m fascinated by Baltimore. It has the pace of the South and the manners of the North,” Lippman says. But what would happen to a perfect couple living in this setting if they were threatened with their own dirty secret at the start of the worst global health crisis in history? That’s what Lippman explores in Prom Mom.
“During the pandemic, I think people became much more inclined to do things they would not have done before—for better or worse. It was this suspended-in-amber time where nothing you did would really count one way or another,” Lippman says. Naturally, Joe and Amber push the limits of that entitlement to horrifying effect.
Lippman herself spent lockdown in Baltimore and has lived there for over forty years, dividing her time between a second home in New Orleans (which makes a significant Prom Mom cameo). But she was born in Atlanta and says that even with her adopted city’s Yankee flavor, she’ll always be a Southern girl.
“When my family left Atlanta and moved to Maryland, it wasn’t considered particularly cool to be a Southerner. Then when I moved to Texas for my first newspaper job in 1981, they were like, ‘You’re a Yankee.’ I had this revelation that I’m not a Yankee,” Lippman says. “I have two Uncle Bubbas. My father had an aunt who was known as Little Sister—no one called her Doreen. My maternal grandparents were known as Big Mama and Big Daddy and my paternal grandparents were Sweetheart and LouLou. So yeah, I’m a Southerner.”
Laura Lippman: ‘It’s important to me not to make stuff easy for readers.’ Photograph: Tribune Content Agency LLC/Alamy
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Laura Lippman: ‘A lot of novelists choose to comfort the comfortable. I don’t do that’
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Lauren Mechling in New York
The acclaimed crime author delivers her most political novel to date about a teen with an unwanted pregnancy
Lauren Mechling
Wed 26 Jul 2023 12.04 EDT
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Laura Lippman is so free of affectation that it can be hard to remember the crime writer is one of our living greats. (Superfan Stephen King called her “the closest writer America has to Ruth Rendell”.)
Lippman, who lives in Baltimore and has been publishing a crime novel every year or two since 1997, was a beat reporter at the Baltimore Sun when she published the first of her Tess Monaghan series, about a reporter turned private investigator that read like Nancy Drew for smart grownups. Over the past decade she has been focusing on standalone titles, which pulse with the energy and wit she became known for but lean into her fondness for noir. Her impostor story What The Dead Know was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Dagger Award, Every Secret Thing was adapted into a film written by Nicole Holofcener and starring Diane Lane, and Lady in the Lake is soon to be an Apple TV+ limited series starring Natalie Portman.
Shanghai Immortal by AY Chao; Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin; Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell.
What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in June
Read more
Despite what its title might suggest, there is little of the lurid or cheap in Lippman’s latest, Prom Mom. Lippman drew inspiration from the real-life episode that made headlines in 1997 when the New Jersey teen Melissa Wexler gave birth to a 28-week-old baby who was found dead in the bathroom during her high school prom.
Also partly set in 1997, her slippery and satisfyingly feminist story takes place in Baltimore – or “Smalltimore” as she calls it – and casts disgraced Amber “Prom Mom” Glass as a member of a love quadrangle. Once called by the tabloids the “Cad Dad”, Joe Simpson has leveraged his white-guy privilege and surrounded himself with an adoring trio of women, his beautiful and successful wife Meredith included. Joe is a Trump voter with a vanity plate, a mama’s boy whose unwillingness to accept responsibility for anything sends everyone’s lives spinning out of control.
Fans of 1940s noir will delight in the story’s slow burn and hairpin twists at the end. Lippman pulled off another extraordinary feat: she managed to write about life in the early pandemic in a way that doesn’t feel drab or impede narrative momentum (the Library Journal review declared Prom Mom “a future Covid classic”).
Lippman has been in physical therapy to tend to the shoulder injury that appears in the original essay she published earlier this year on the digital book platform Scribd. The Summer of Fall chronicles the tumultuous backdrop against which she finished writing Prom Mom. She was looking after her school-age daughter; caring for her mother, who’d suffered a serious fall at her senior living facility; looking after her sister, who lives in a memory care unit as a result of her Parkinson’s; and dealing with her own slip on the subway steps in New York City. Oh, and she was healing from the dissolution of her marriage to the writer and The Wire co-creator David Simon. In the essay she ponders her current situation (“I have time to myself every week. It is, I think, ironic: Every mother I know yearns to be alone in her own house, yet the only ones who regularly achieve this bliss are divorced”) and reflects on the plane ride when she knew her marriage was beyond repair (“My soon-to-be-ex worked furiously on his laptop for most of the eight-hour trip. I was used to him working furiously, all the time. But, in this case, he was writing me a goodbye letter, which he gave me five days later, after announcing his decision to leave our marriage.”).
The Guardian spoke with Lippman a week before Prom Mom’s publication. The interview has been edited and condensed.
Prom Mom centers on a teenager with an unwanted pregnancy, which makes it one of your more political novels to date.
When I was writing it, I didn’t expect it to become so timely. I did not see the overturning of Roe v Wade – I should have, but I didn’t. There’s this old quote about writing that it’s the choice between, you know afflicting the comfortable or comforting the afflicted. I think a lot of novelists choose to comfort the comfortable, and flatter their readers. Those books read like a hot knife through butter. I don’t do that. There were other things in Prom Mom that made people nervous.
Like what?
Well, for one thing, Meredith is an MSNBC viewer. One of the things that I’m playing with in the novel is that Meredith is a thoughtful, conscientious person who is comfortable with the way the language of the culture is changing. She’s very progressive. What she is not is particularly empathetic. It’s important to me not to make stuff easy for readers.
Prom Mom artwork
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Photograph: Harper Collins
Is Prom Mom your only book that was directly inspired by a tabloid story?
It was inspired by a podcast episode [of You’re Wrong About] that was called Prom Mom. When I looked into it, I found out this happens a lot more than people think. I found stories going back into the 1950s – you know, a teenager giving birth at home to a baby no one knew existed. What got my interest wasn’t really the tabloid aspect. But [the host] Sarah [Marshall] made this offhand sarcastic comment like, “Oh, of course the teenage girl knows her body so well.” That’s it! I mean, you really could be a pregnant teenager and convince yourself that you’re not [pregnant]. You really could just have somehow talked yourself into believing this can’t be happening. And you survive that somehow. To me, that’s the most amazing thing, that these girls survived these unassisted births. I just started thinking about that. When I started writing this book, I felt that most people who read it would be like, well, you know, thank goodness that this isn’t something that continues to happen today. And, no it continues to happen.
There’s a feminist spirit driving this book.
I feel like there’s a fuck-it feminist spirit to pretty much everything I do. You know my marriage ended in a way that’s pretty collegial. I have a great co-parent and my ex-husband and I get along really well, and we’re doing a great job raising our kid together. So now I’m back out in the world. And you know, at first everyone’s like, oh, you have to go on the apps and you have to start dating again. At some point, I was just like, I don’t want to date. Why would I want to date? I don’t want to marry again. I’m really happy. I can take care of myself and take care of my 13-year-old daughter and take care of my 92-year-old mother and help out with my 67-year-old sister. My friend said: Laura, I want you to go back and open up and I’m like, no, no, you don’t understand. I’m 64 years old. I have lots of friends. I have a life that really makes me happy and I know right now I’m totally in charge.
In your Scribd essay you say you relate to Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth.
I’m totally into my Hestia vibes. She had to tend to the fire of Mount Olympus pretty much 24/7. I’m like: Zeus, I can’t get married. I’m taking care of the hearth. I’m doing a lot of stuff here. Leave me alone.
Tell me of the challenge of setting a novel in the time of Covid.
That was just a really dark time. And it was kind of perfect for the mood of the book. There’s no silver lining, but I developed ways of coping. I developed a wonderful habit of menu planning and going to the grocery store only once a week. It was so efficient. That feels so long ago, I’m back to my old habits.
How did your past life as a newspaper reporter come into play in the writing of Prom Mom?
I worked at newspapers from 1981 to 2001. I wrote my first seven books in the mornings while I was working full-time. So far, I haven’t been able to write a book without weaving in some reporting. For this one, I interviewed Ronnie Mund, who was Howard Stern’s limo driver. I knew from listening to the show that Ronnie used to take kids to proms right in the era that I was writing about. His reputation within the show is as this wild sexual adventurer, but he was such a gentleman when we spoke. We talked about little things like how do you judge who’s a good kid? Did you ever let two kids have sex in the limo? The research I worked hardest on was learning about commercial real estate. Luckily, I had a former colleague from the Baltimore Sun who works at the Baltimore Business Journal, and I talked to her about the difference between commercial strip centers that were classified as like A, B or C. To me, that was poetry. And there was a Baltimore woman I know from Twitter, and she knew a lot about real estate law. She really helped me sort of design Joe’s financial situation.
The last Tess Monaghan came out in 2015. Are we ever going to see her again?
She’s gonna come back. I need to figure out how to write her a proper ending. I had a long conversation with my film agent in the spring, and the only television project that I have any interest in working on is a Tess Monaghan television show. I have a very elaborate vision for it.
The vibe would be different from how Tess stories used to be, I imagine.
Yeah, my vibe’s gotten really dark. It happens that the book I’m working on right now is about a minor character from the Tess Monaghan series. I took this 68-year-old woman and put her on a cruise. I think of it as a mash-up of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler and Charade. It’s a sweet book, but of course it’s still a crime novel.
Prom Mom is out now in the US (William Morrow $30) and will be published in the UK on 10 August (Faber £8.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Shop Talk: Laura Lippman Is a Morning Writer (But the Walk Comes First)
Crime writers talking routine, exercise, posture, and making sure you can punch the keys hard enough.
February 3, 2022 By Eli Cranor
SHOP TALK
There’s just something about Laura Lippman. Some unquantifiable X-factor. A raw power, buzzing beneath the surface of the bestselling author’s laid-back demeanor.
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When we sat down for our talk, it was getting late, a little past nine. Laura stared back at me through my computer screen almost sleepy-eyed. Glass of red wine in hand, she admitted it was nearing her bedtime.
I got straight to it, not wanting to waste the time of an author of over twenty books (including the award-winning Tess Monaghan series). It didn’t take long before I realized exactly what it was I’d seen in Laura from the start, that X-factor I mentioned.
The following story sums it up much better than I can. I’ll let Laura take it from here:
Laura Lippman: I was at this writers’ conference. There was another writer talking and I didn’t like this person very much. The person had been rude to me, kind of snobby, and then they start giving a talk about writing that I found very “precious.” I just don’t like that term when talking about what we do. Writing is creative. It’s fun. It’s an incredible honor and privilege to get to do creative stuff, and there are these weird otherworldly elements. But making writing too “precious” can become a barrier to keep other people out.
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Eli Cranor: Oh, wow. Please unpack that.
LL: If you turn writing into magic then other people who don’t feel magical feel like they can’t do it. Almost anyone who really wants to can write a story. They might not write a great story, but it’s a very accessible world. So, sitting in a crowded ballroom on a Saturday where people have taken time out of their lives, their jobs . . . I’m listening to this author talk in this very flowery way about writing. It just felt so impractical and inaccessible. I was like, I already don’t like this person, I disagree with everything this person is saying. I’m not going to get up and fight with this person, but I am going to have a private fight right now. While this person is up there making it sound like writing is so magical, I’m going to sit here with my legal pad and I’m going to brainstorm my way to my next book.
EC: Hell yes.
LL: I just start going at it, brainstorming, making all those big circles on the paper, asking myself, what do I write about? I write about what I find interesting. What do I find interesting? I find crimes that were in the news when I was kid interesting. What crimes? I’m very interested in Lolita, but I don’t want to write pedophilia. And I’m just like filling these circles out. As I’m writing, I recalled a case from my childhood. A story about a serial killer. And that was it. That became the idea for a book I published in 2010.
EC: That’s a damn good story. Hits home for me on all sorts of levels. I’ve always leaned more toward the “writing as work” camp.
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LL: Right? I just published a book of short stories. Almost every story in that book started with someone coming to me, saying, “I’m working on an anthology and I need a story that’s about this . . .” That sounds so workman-like, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I actually like it. I like the fact that it’s so down to earth.
EC: I just read Baltimore Blues over the summer. The thing that stuck out to me most about your protagonist, Tess Monaghan, was her daily drive. How she had to get up each morning and complete her rowing workout. How does the routine of writing fit into your day, especially with this workman-like mentality?
LL: When I first started writing, I was working full time at a newspaper. I remembered people talking about how, if you want to save your money, take money straight out of your paycheck each month and put it in the bank. Skim it off the top. That way you never touch it. And I thought, what if I do that with my time? If I get up in the morning and I write for two hours, I’ve paid myself first. I’ve given my time to my fiction. That worked out really well. I’m very much a morning person.
EC: I enjoy your morning walk pictures on social media. How does that work into your process? I’m guessing the walk comes first?
LL: The walk comes first. I’ve got a kid. So, if it’s my day to take her to school, I wake up at six, have a cup of coffee, and then literally drag my daughter out of bed. She likes it. I take her by the ankles and pull her out. She knows she has to go get in the shower, and I’m going to walk while she’s showering. I got two miles in today while she was showering. I’m definitely a morning writer. I’m pretty brain dead from noon to three. I don’t know how I kept a job. I don’t know how anyone does anything creatively between noon and three. I know—because I have read your pieces—that you’re very in tune with this thing not enough people talk about, which is the connection between being a writer and having some kind of physical routine. There really is. The walking is part of it for me. I also have a trainer I work out with via Zoom. I think writing has a complementary relationship with some kind of physical activity. The walking, the working out . . . I also have a Peloton because I’m a cliché. But I often solve problems when I’m working out.
EC: How, exactly, do you try to use the physical side to benefit your writing? Are you aware of it?
LL: When I go off into a physical activity, I’m not trying to think about my work at all. I head off into a walk or a workout, and my brain is just elsewhere. We all know how it is. You’ve got a problem you can’t solve. You get all tensed up. Then you go on a walk and your brain relaxes, the answers come flowing in.
EC: So true.
LL: Here’s a thing we never talk about—writing is super physical. People think of it as sedentary, but that’s not the case. When I’m writing, I have the worst posture. I’m twisted up like a pretzel. I have one leg underneath me. It’s weird. I’ve been writing at my dining room table for the last two years, and that hasn’t helped at all. I have friends who write by hand, which is amazing to me. I know of writers who work on typewriters. I have a typewriter. I’ve tried to use it, but it’s just a completely different form of composition because it’s so difficult to hit the keys hard enough.
EC: It’s so manual, like you’re really wringing it out of there.
LL: As old as I am, I did have the benefit of working on a personal computer throughout my journalism career. But, yeah, there’s this really strong mind/body thing going on with writing. I’m very aware of the physicality of writing. Where I am. How I’m sitting. I’m sixty-two years old. I’ve been writing a long time. I always have one leg under me. That’s just how I write.
EC: Ace Atkins mentioned the same sort of thing in his talk. I asked him if he’d ever considered getting a stand-up desk, and he said he couldn’t write unless he was sitting down.
LL: As crazy as it is, having this one foot under me—that’s what makes me go.
EC: That’s great. That’s what this whole column is for, finding that one thing. Do you have anything else that is precious to your writing routine?
LL: Social media is a struggle. It wasn’t a struggle when I first started because there wasn’t social media. If one is on social media—and I am—it creates a buzzy brain. You have to get away from that. Interestingly, there’s a simple cure for buzzy brain, and that’s reading. It has to be reading for pleasure, though. Going into 2022, I’m taking a break, pretty much, from blurbing. I’m really conflicted about this. I want to help. People helped me. I want to boost other authors. But the pandemic really destroyed my focus for reading. I had just enough focus for writing, but when I was done for the day, I couldn’t read. It made me miserable. You become a writer because you’re a reader. I don’t trust any writer who didn’t begin as a passionate reader. But listen, the more I read, the more I create the brain that I need to write. So that means my reading has to be for me. It has to be what I want to read right now. The first book I’ve read this year was Oh, William by Elizabeth Strout. Then I read Alafair Burke’s Find Me. I loved it. Now I’ve got two books going. I’m reading Our Country Friends, by Gary Shteyngart. It’s one of the first pandemic books, which is interesting to me. And the other book I’m reading right now is the biography of Gypsy Rose Lee called Gypsy. So, yeah, what I’ve found is I need to spend an hour or two each day reading. Which is a lot. Like, that’s as big a commitment as walking five miles every day.
EC: What are you doing to carve that reading time out?
LL: It helps that my kid is old enough to be a reader. We get into bed and read at night. That doesn’t always work because sometimes I fall asleep. So I try to read during those afternoon hours that are not my peak creative hours. When I get into the reading groove, it imposes a calmness on my mind. It reminds me why I became a writer. I have this very, very vivid memory. I’m in my early twenties. My car’s been screwed up in a crash. I’m living in Waco, Texas. I have a boyfriend in San Antonio, so I have to take a Greyhound bus to go see him. I get on the bus and I’m reading Larry McMurtry’s All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers. It has a very simple beginning. “I think I fell in love with Sally when I woke up next to her on the floor.” Something like that. But I have this clear memory of sitting on the bus and thinking to myself, I love this book. I’m so happy and excited to be reading this book. One day I’d be so happy if I could write a book that would make someone feel like I’m feeling right now.
EC: What a great memory.
LL: Yeah, reading and writing are very hand in glove for me. But it’s getting harder. That’s where social media comes back in. You can go online, write one hundred and forty characters, and people will write right back to you. It feels very immediate, very important, but it’s dangerous. It really is a little dangerous.
EC: Yeah, I held out on social media early on. My wife had a Facebook account. But I spent two years writing seriously before joining Twitter. I often wonder if that was the best choice for my writing. I have met some cool people there. It’s just such a distraction.
LL: What I’ve noticed is that my best use of social media is to slide in sometime during the morning, post my photo, and generally try to stay away. Almost nothing I have to say is vital on social media. No one actually needs to know my opinion about anything.
EC: Do you do anything specific to guard against social media stealing your time?
LL: I did use Freedom for a while, but I didn’t find that to be necessary. When I commit, I just commit. The biggest question for me is whether I should leave my writing to Google something, or if I should just leave it blank for the moment. This morning I was working on a chapter, a chapter that was suggested by my own journal. I wanted to write about March 2021. The weirdest thing about writing right now is that three months back was its own historic era. Time is moving in a way that we can’t comprehend. Do you remember July? Do you remember last winter? Anyway, I wanted to write a specific scene in March 2021, which was when people were beginning to get vaccinated. People had all these expectations at that point. But the thing I was interested in was the weather on that date. I will Google weather for specific dates. I want to know how that impacts what I’m writing about. So, yeah, I’m always trying to stay in the scene and not Google too much. I write pretty fast. I’m so committed to the chaos and the mess that sometimes I can’t even remember minor characters’ names. I’ll just call her “X” or “Y” or “B.” I’ll get it all right later. But when I’m really happy with my writing, I don’t want to get on Twitter. I don’t want to leave the document. The truth is, when I leave my document there are only a few things waiting for me.
EC: Which are?
LL: Twitter. I love it. I just do. My mail is also waiting for me, which I hate. I hate my email so much. I’m so old, I remember when email was just kind of fun and superficial. Now email is nothing but hell.
EC: What? Why? I love my email. My inbox is like a Christmas tree. I always come rushing to it in the morning, hoping to see something sparkly and new.
LL: Okay, yeah. There’s still that side of email for me. But now it’s mostly just requests, more new assignments. I’m sort of AWOL from Facebook. I don’t like the politics, but I can’t leave because that’s the only place a lot of my fans can find me. So, yeah, back to what is waiting for me when I leave the document: Twitter, email, Facebook, Google News. I like to see what’s going on. And then the final thing is Spelling Bee at the New York Times. All my friends are migrating to this new game, Wordle. I can’t do it. I refuse to learn how to play it.
EC: You said you write fast. Do you aim for a specific word count when you’re working on a first draft?
LL: I try to hit at least a thousand words. It’s different when I get deep into the manuscript and it’s time to revise. But when I’m creating fresh words, I like to get to a thousand. Today I wrote twelve hundred words. They’re rough. It’s not good writing, but the scene is what it needs to be. It was a good scene. And, yeah, I write really fast. I used to go all the way through a draft, telling myself to write the whole thing like I was being chased by villagers with torches. Just run! Don’t stop. Don’t correct anything. At a certain point, though, that stopped working. For me, writing a novel is like running that “ladders” drill. I know you know what I’m talking about.
EC: Yeah. We called them line drills.
LL: You run, then you run back, then you run a little farther, and then you run back again. What I do now is I write until something doesn’t feel right, then I go back to the beginning. Then I go forward again and get a little farther. About halfway through a book, I’ll take a break and do these crazy word-blind outlines. I try to come up with a physical manifestation of the novel that has no words on it. Just colors and shapes and lines.
EC: No words?
LL: No. I just need to look at it. Make sure it has a proper balance. Sometimes I make discoveries when I do that. Sometimes I don’t. For the most part, I go as far as I can. I hit a wall. I head back to the start. I rewrite everything . . . When I finish a book, it’s a blend of drafts. The first third could be more than ten drafts.
EC: Do you write every day when you’re in this process?
LL: I try to write Monday through Friday. Some days it doesn’t happen, and I’m really forgiving of it. I’m going to be teaching virtually next week for three hours a day. I’ve been doing this for years. Back when it was in person teaching, I’d still get up at six every morning and write for an hour. I didn’t usually get my thousand words in, but I just wanted to keep the discipline alive. I do believe in time off. That’s why I don’t write seven days a week. It’s rare for me to write on the weekends. That’s in part—to be candid—because of my first marriage. Back then, I was writing all the time, and that marriage didn’t last.
EC: That one goes straight to the heart. I’ve really been working on how to balance it all, how to schedule breaks. Do you take a break when you finish a manuscript? Like, do you give yourself some downtime before starting something new?
LL: This is a big change for me. And by the way, I just want to tell you: You have a day job and kids. When I started, I had a day job and no kids. That’s so much. So, yeah, in the early part of my career, I’d turn a book in, maybe take a couple days off, and get started on the next one while my editor was working on the last one. About five years ago, I decided I was ready for my Diva Moment. I decided I’d turn my book in and wouldn’t start a new one until I got through copy edits and proofs. In other words, I decided it would be to the work’s benefit—and my benefit—to keep only one book in my head at a time. I think I was right about that. I’ve come to accept the idea that there’s a benefit from stillness. A field needs time to lie fallow. The same is true for an author.
EC: Ah, that’s great. Relates to sports too. Do you have an athletic background?
LL: Not at all. The words that I was called in grade school and middle school are now all politically incorrect. I was not athletically gifted in any way. What I am is something like an ox. Just a big strong person. I just needed to find a way to enjoy that part of myself. I am super competitive. I work on tamping that down because I don’t think it’s always positive. I’m definitely someone who understands showing up.
EC: Like showing up and doing the work?
LL: Exactly. When I worked at the Baltimore Sun, somebody once said, “If you look at the Baltimore Sun in 1995, no one picks you as the future novelist.” I know that sounds mean, but it’s not mean. It’s factual. Nobody would’ve picked me. I wouldn’t have picked me. My name wasn’t even on the shortlist. The reason I’m the person who came out of that newsroom with a career in fiction is because I showed up. I did the work every day. I taught myself how to write novels.
EC: Why did you do it? Why do you do it? Why do you show up every day and take so much time away from the other parts of your life? Why do you write?
LL: I just picked up a book by Alice McDermott. At the end it tells this story about a brilliant writer, and he’s like, “If you can do anything else, do it.” I would say the same thing. If you can be happy without writing, go ahead, if you can be happy. I’m happier being a writer. I’m aware that that means allowing a bit of a wedge to exist between me and full-out existence. I had therapy today. I told my therapist that I just realized that—at least in terms of financial well-being—I don’t have to write forever. I’m old enough to collect Social Security. I could retire. But I want to write. This is how I make sense of the world. I’ve been telling myself stories and trying to order the universe since I was very young. So that’s why I do it. It’s such a hubristic and prideful thing we do. There are enough books. Start reading now and you won’t run out. But there’s that tantalizing belief that there’s a book—I’m not saying it’s a good book—but there’s a book that only you can write. And I’d like to write that book and put it on the shelf. Then I want to go write another one.
My First Thriller: Laura Lippman
How Lippman went from Baltimore reporter to crime fiction icon...with a few obstacles along the way.
July 21, 2022 By Rick Pullen
MY FIRST THRILLER
Crime novelist Laura Lippman never stood a fair chance of becoming anything but a writer. Her mother was a librarian. Her dad was a newspaper editorial writer. Her sister worked in bookstores. How could she possibly do anything else?
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But then there was that editor at the Baltimore Sun who told the young reporter after she’d worked at the newspaper for some time, she “just wasn’t a good writer.” Lippman’s older now, he’s dead and she’s taught writing at Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College and Eckerd College’s “Writer’s in Paradise” annual conference.
Couldn’t write, huh?
Yep. She never stood a chance to do anything but. And you must wonder about her crotchety editor. Yet, what do editors know anyway, especially from a writer’s POV?
Lippman’s inevitability started early. She published her first book at age five using the only word she could spell, “pig.” Short. One syllable. Efficient. Repeated on every page.
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She was both author and publisher. And at that tender age, no one had ever told her she couldn’t write. She even illustrated her debut novel. “I typed it up and drew pictures,” she says. “I said it was written in caveman language…I was really eager to join the secret society of readers.”
“I was an eccentric little kid who wanted to make up stories for my Barbies. I love reading and I love the way books make me feel. It was this constant desire to evoke in others what I felt when reading and feeling transported.”
One book that especially elicited that feeling was Larry McMurtry’s All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers. Lippman was in her early twenties, living in Texas and writing for the Waco Tribune Herald.
Her car had been in an accident, so she had time to read McMurtry’s novel during a Greyhound Bus trip to see her boyfriend in San Antonio. She was moved. “Fiction is dealing with an audience whose guard is down.”
“I always wanted to be a novelist before I went to journalism school at Northwestern,” she says. Yet even though she was surrounded by reading and writing throughout her life, “I didn’t know how anyone became a novelist.”
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So, she came out of college and followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming a newspaper reporter. After nearly three years in Waco, she landed a position at the San Antonio Light.
At 30, she applied for a reporter’s job at the Baltimore Sun. During her interview she was told, “you’re just not a good enough writer to work here.” She was hired anyway.
“I wasn’t going to be defeated. Not a good writer? What do you say to that? I realized my editor had nothing constructive to offer me.”
She knew she couldn’t change his attitude, but if she wrote a book, “I wouldn’t be limited to this person’s point of view.” So, she began looking elsewhere for inspiration.
Lippman experienced what most women have in the male-dominated workplace: putdowns, dismissal, sexism. She’s clawed through seeking greater autonomy over her life and career. “I never really fell in love with journalism. I liked it, but the love was never really there. I never found the joy I have as a novelist.”
Today, she wants to control her own narrative. Cooperative, funny, witty, smart—she’s all that. And she seems to be constantly on the move, an energy that’s apparent during a phone interview for this story, with the clinking of pots and pans always in the background.
Lippman does not suffer from false modesty. Instead, she is proud to not only acknowledge but to state forthrightly she’s ambitious. Our culture, she says, has turned ambition into a dirty word. Nobody ever uses ambition as a compliment for a woman.
“I’ve gone from being a timid writer who was just trying to hit the lowest common denominator…to being an immensely ambitious writer and a pretty confident one too.
I love to say I’m confident because it annoys people. Our culture is really uncomfortable with women being ambitious…I still know so many women telling you they’re not as good as they think they are. I’m never going to be that person.”
“I’m pretty factual about my ambition. I aspire to write the best things I can write.” And that goes back to her first novel, Baltimore Blues, published in 1997. “It’s sweet, well-meaning, and pretty well-constructed. I think the idea behind it is pretty sound.”
It began in 1991 with a glancing experience with a former boyfriend. What if, she wondered, someone killed her boyfriend’s boss, and she would be the hero of the story? The two talked about her idea and let it simmer.
“This is the seed of my first book. I had no interest in villains…I didn’t want to write about people who are bigger than life…I wanted to write about real people. This is where fiction does something journalism could never do.”
During this period Lippman met Michele Slung, former editor of the Washington Post’s weekly Book World section, who asked her to contribute some erotic short stories to an anthology. This experience convinced Lippman she needed to write her book “so I can prove I’m a writer.” She decided on a mystery for her first attempt “because that wasn’t serious writing.”
She purchased a Mac computer and promised her husband she would write a novel within a year. Slung read her passages and gave blunt criticism. Lippman wasn’t done after a year, but did finish after two, and in 1993 Slung told her it was publishable.
Baltimore Blues introduced readers to Tess Monaghan, an unemployed newspaper reporter who investigates the murder of a notorious attorney. She begins snooping around in hopes of clearing a friend who has come under suspicion.
Michele offered to help Lippman find an agent. The first pick went nowhere. The second was a nightmare who refused to take her calls and held her manuscript hostage for months. After that debacle, Michele found Vicky Bijur. Bijur called and immediately began giving Lippman notes on her manuscript. Lippman was confused. “Would you consider being my agent?” she asked.
“Oh no,” Bijur clarified, “I want to be your agent.” It was now the summer of 1995—four years after Lippman began writing her novel, the whole time holding down her reporter’s job at the Sun.
Bijur circulated Lippman’s manuscript in the fall and three editors bit. Carrie Feron at Avon Books (William Morris) gave her a two-book contract.
“I was super excited,” Lippman says. A mass paperback edition of Baltimore Blues was released the following year. To celebrate, Rob Hiaasen, brother of famed Florida novelist and columnist, Carl Hiaasen, and her good friend and colleague who sat four feet away from her in the newsroom, took her out for coffee to celebrate.
Lippman’s voice shakes recalling that time. She tears up and stammers hesitantly, the memory still raw. Two decades after their celebration, Hiaasen was one of five newspaper employees gunned down in the Annapolis, Maryland Capital Gazette mass shooting. “I can’t talk about Rob without crying,” she says.
A British newspaper, trying to be catty, once labeled her novels “chic lit with guns.” She took no offense and instead owned it. “That’s what I intended it to be.”
While her book publishing career began to pick up speed, her career at the Baltimore Sun downshifted into park. Her editors were not overjoyed at their employee spending so much time working on her own time writing novels. Because she was a fast reader, she had been covering the book publishing industry for the paper long before her first novel was published. She often interviewed authors on book tours when they came through town. Still, she was careful to create a firewall between her own budding side career as a novelist and her newspaper job writing about the book business. That wasn’t good enough for her bosses. She was sent to work in a suburban bureau—journalism Siberia for someone with her experience in the newsroom in downtown Baltimore. This was despite a union rule that punitive transfers were not allowed. So, she filed a grievance with the union.
“I essentially got demoted,” she says. “I was treated so badly that I grinded my teeth until my back molars cracked.”
She was told by management, “‘It’s not possible to work at a newspaper and write a book.’ I know because I tried it. They wanted one hundred percent devotion. They had no claim on my personal time. That was an attitude they found infuriating.”
She eventually was given a package and left after signing a non-disclosure agreement. At the same time, her marriage was falling apart.
So much for publishing success.
But like when she was told she couldn’t write, she was not going to be defeated this time either. Her unambiguous drive kicked in and she continued to write and the reporter-turned-private investigator, Tess Monaghan, has now appeared in more than a dozen novels.
“I’m just a person who likes to sit around and make things up,” she says. At the newspaper, “I didn’t have that God-like control.”
She does now.
It’s been a long journey since she typed those first three letters on the page at age five, using caveman language. Despite the detour in her newspaper career, she never had any other choice but to take the turn toward what she loves best.
It was inevitable.
___________________________________
Baltimore Blues
___________________________________
I want to be a writer: 5 years old
Experience: Newspaper Reporter, Short Story Writer
Writing Time: 11 months
Agents Contacted: 4
Agent Responses: 4
Agent Search: 18 months
Time to Sell Novel: 4 months
First Novel Agent: Vicky Bijur
First Novel Editor: Carrie Feron
First Novel Publisher: Avon Books (William Morrow)
Inspiration: James M. Cain, Sara Paretsky, Carl Hiaasen, Walter Mosley
Advice to Writers: Read broadly and well. Find what works for you.
Website: LauraLippman.com
Laura Lippman: Finding the Focus to Write Crime Mysteries
August 14, 2019 by Alexandra Dempsey
Laura Lippman, author and writer
At Freedom, we love our users – not just because they use our product, but because they’re cool – cool people working on cool stuff. Academy Award-nominated screenwriters, bestselling authors, editors, journalists, developers, illustrators, designers, academics, coaches, bloggers, explorers, and entrepreneurs – the Freedom community is packed with curious, creative, and passionate go-getters. We love to share their stories, advice, and process because how better to learn about productivity than from the productive?
Meet Laura Lippman.
Laura Lippman is a writer and bestselling novelist that started her career as a journalist. Laura spent 20 years reporting for various publications, including 12 years at The Baltimore Sun. It was during this time that she began writing novels, and by the time she decided to leave daily journalism in 2001, she had published seven crime novels about “accidental PI,” Tess Monaghan, all while reporting full-time.
Lippman is now a NY Times bestselling author of the acclaimed stand-alones After I’m Gone, I’d know You Anywhere, and What the Dead Know. Her work has won her virtually every major award given to US crime writings, including the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Agatha Award, Nero Wolfe Award, Shamus Award, and the Quill Award among others.
Lippman’s latest mystery novel, Lady in the Lake, is her take on modern noir and has already earned praise from acclaimed writers such as Stephen King, who wrote “Lippman answers all outstanding questions with a totally cool double twist that your reviewer — a veteran reader of mysteries — never saw coming.”
With such experience, discipline, and 25 published books, we decided to sit down with Laura this week to learn a little more about how she finds the focus to write modern crime mysteries.
How did you know that you wanted to be an author and what were your first steps in making this your career?
I wanted to be a writer early on, wrote my first “book” at age 5, tried to write a novel when I was 12. I went to journalism school because I knew that was one path to being a full-time writer, but working as a novelist was always my goal. That meant a period of seven years in which I wrote seven novels while working at a fairly demanding day job at the Baltimore Sun. Truthfully, I felt lucky it only took seven years.
At what point did you realize that tech was taking a toll on your productivity, time, relationships? When did you know that you had to do something about it?
I thought I had a great system — I’d set a word/time quota (1,000K, three hours) and I’d take a break every hour or so, do a quick twirl through my email, Facebook and Twitter, then go back to work. As a habit, this wasn’t so very different from taking a coffee break back in the newsroom. But then I realized that those apps affected what I’ll call deep focus. They made me jumpy. So I decided to try Freedom to make sure I had two blocks of time every day that were committed to writing.
How do you prioritize what gets your time and attention each day?
I’m a de facto single mom — my husband is away M-F for his job, for much of this year. So my third-grader is my top priority 6 a.m — 8 a.m. and then 5 p.m. — 9 p.m. By 8 a.m., I’m doing one of two things: writing or working out. If I work out first, I then try to go straight to writing. My sharpest hours are in the morning, I’m very dull in the afternoon, so that’s a good time to do less creative things, such as email.
How do you stay focused and motivated on a daily basis?
If I don’t write, I don’t get paid. I find that darn motivating.
How do you optimize your environment for productivity and focus? How do you incorporate Freedom into your schedule?
I set up Freedom to block sites during my most productive hours, 8-11:30, but also during hours when I feel I should be focused on my daughter, 5-8.
What is the most difficult or challenging aspect about your work or working process? Do you have any strategies that you use to help overcome these challenges?
E.L. Doctorow said that writing a novel is like driving at night in the fog, with head lamps that illuminate only a small portion of what’s ahead — but it’s possible to make the whole trip that way. My primary strategy is to show up on a regular basis, set realistic goals, and to avoid rabbit holes. (Research is as big a rabbit hole as anything.)
What resources or tools do you use daily and have found most beneficial to your working process?
All I need is a laptop — but I absolutely need a laptop, not a typewriter, not a legal pad and pen. Computers and I came of age together, I’ve been using them since I started my first job at age 22, and it’s how I write. I had a bout of carpal tunnel almost 20 years ago and it was worrisome. People said, “Oh, you can use voice recognition software.” But I identify with Pauline Kael, whose writing career was sidelined by Parkinson’s. She said something to the effect of, “I think I wrote as much with my hands as I ever did with my head.”
Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman
What projects are you currently most excited about?
I have a novel that was just published at the end of July, The Lady in the Lake, which is set in 1966 Baltimore. It turned into a kind of homage to my father, a journalist who started at the Baltimore Sun in ‘65. I finished the draft that I sent to my editor on June 27; the next day my friend Rob Hiaasen was one of the five people killed in the Annapolis Capital Gazette newsroom, so the book is dedicated to all of them. I didn’t set out to write a novel about newspapers, yet somehow I did, and it felt write to dedicate it to people who died doing their jobs.
What do you do outside of your work routine that helps you stay healthy and productive?
I work out with a trainer twice a week, hit the gym on my own twice a week and have a weekly tennis lesson. I really like to cook and I make generally healthy meals for my daughter and me. I try to limit screens at night and attempt to read 100 pages, preferably in a non-digital book, every day.
Where are you currently based?
Baltimore and New Orleans, although I wish there was a little more New Orleans in the mix!
Lippman, Laura MURDER TAKES A VACATION Morrow/HarperCollins (Fiction None) $27.00 6, 17 ISBN: 9780062998101
An ordinary woman finds extraordinary adventures on a river cruise on the Seine.
Muriel Blossom acknowledges that she's a "no-frills" person, a trait that served her well when doing surveillance for Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. When she gets an unexpected upgrade on her British Airways flight to Paris, she finds herself not only in business class, but on the other side of the looking glass. Allan Turner, a handsome stranger, befriends her in the Chesapeake Lounge, which her upgrade allows her to access. She misses her connection at Heathrow because of the weather, so he invites her to share his luxurious suite in a London hotel, paid for, he insists, by his firm. Then he sends her off on the Eurostar train to reach Paris via the Chunnel in time for her ship's departure. Once in Paris, she meets another stranger, younger but equally attentive. Danny Johnson takes her to a friend's atelier in the Marais where the plus-sized Muriel can find the fashionable clothing she deserves. A mysterious man in a bellman uniform knocks on her hotel-room door and invites her to leave her luggage in the hallway so it can be transferred overnight to her ship, but of course she realizes that's nonsense. She also receives the news that Allan died in a fall from his balcony the night after she left London. When Danny turns up on her cruise, she knows something's off, but she can't put together the pieces. That's because Lippman is unrivaled in her ability to lay out clues in a way that makes them seem not only mysterious, but downright surreal. Only at the end does everything fit together so naturally that it all seems blazingly obvious. Like Muriel, who's patient and sensible to the end, you'll just have to wait.
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Lippman, Laura: MURDER TAKES A VACATION." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A849503150/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cae97d2e. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Laura Lippman. Morrow, $30 (272p)
ISBN 978-0-06-299810
*| Lippman (Prom Mom) triumphs with this charming mystery featuring Muriel Blossom, a Baltimore widow--and former assistant to PI Tess Monaghan, star of another Lippman series--who finds an $8 million lottery ticket abandoned in a parking lot. In the decade since Muriel's husband died, she's carved out a pleasant but bland existence with her daughter's family. After she hits the jackpot, she makes arrangements for a cruise in France with her best friend, Elinor. On the flight over, Muriel meets the charming Allan, who takes her to dinner after they land in Paris. When Allan suspiciously dies the next day, the police question Muriel, since she was in one of the most recent photos on Allan's phone. Enter American stranger Danny Johnson, who ingratiates himself with Muriel and warns her she might be in danger. After her and Elinor's ship leaves port, Muriel's stateroom is ransacked, a man attempts to mug her, and she learns Danny is lying about his identity. Lippman fans will be delighted by the appearance of Tess, who enlivens the plot after Muriel calls her for advice. By the time the clever conclusion rolls around, readers will be sad to see this trip come to an end. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary. (June)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 PWxyz, LLC
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"Murder Takes a Vacation." Publishers Weekly, vol. 272, no. 15, 14 Apr. 2025, pp. 32+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A836572453/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ac48b19d. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lippman, Laura. Murder Takes a Vacation. Morrow. Jun. 2025. 272p. ISBN 9780062998101. $30. M
A supporting character in Lippman's Tess Monaghan books, Muriel Blossom takes on real main-character energy in this standalone cozy mystery (following the harder-edged Prom Mom). This is as much a study of a woman discovering herself at midlife as it is a story of possible murder, stolen art, and people being not what--or who--they seem to be. Like Miranda July's All Fours, the novel tackles women's changing bodies with a combination of humor, grim realism, and expansiveness, as Muriel acknowledges her internalized fatphobia and begins to recognize her beauty not despite but because of her shape. Plus, there's a plot twist that involves a bottle of melatonin-what could be more midlife than that?--and commentary on how women of a certain age make good investigators because they are socially invisible. Witty and propulsive without ever sacrificing its character-driven exploration of women's identities in relationships and with themselves, this could blossom into a series. VERDICT Like the novel's lottery-winning protagonist, Lippman's fans will feel like they hit the jackpot with this warm and cozy romp through a Paris vacation and cruise, without too many lives lost along the way.--Emily Bowles
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Bowles, Emily. "Lippman, Laura. Murder Takes a Vacation." Library Journal, vol. 150, no. 3, Mar. 2025, p. 85. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A837611342/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fbe58cd5. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Byline: Eliza Nellums
By Laura Lippman
William Morrow. 320 pp. $30
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Laura Lippman's new novel, "Prom Mom," is nominally focused on a familiar-feeling story of teenage pregnancy. Here, a girl - loosely based on New Jersey high school student Melissa Drexler - gives birth at prom and leaves the baby to die. But that's not really what the book is about. Rather, "Prom Mom" explores the unsettling love triangle between the titular character, the father of the child and that man's wife, as well as the long-term fallout of that fateful prom night.
Our protagonist is Amber Glass - like her name, both prismatic and transparent - a woman "so good at secrets that she had managed to keep one from herself." Amber resents having taken on the burden of the blame for the crime, even if the baby's father, Joe, didn't know she was pregnant at the time. The book follows the lingering consequences of the birth and death of their child. Joe, a weak, hapless guy, goes on to become successful in real estate. His wife is Meredith, a cool and competent plastic surgeon; he also has a lover at the office named Jordan. Newspapers covering the crime (in real life and the novel) dubbed him "cad dad," and no wonder.
After being released from prison, Amber returns to their hometown in the carefully described suburbs north of Baltimore. Our - shall we call them star-crossed? - couple circles and narrowly misses each other, then finally connects. But this is no romance novel. As the pandemic descends and problems mount, the story picks up pace and intensity, moving into the realm of a thriller as all three become implicated in a crime caper: an insurance scam that evolves into a murder-for-hire scheme.
Moving between past and present, Lippman builds the stories of her main characters. None are especially deep - or sympathetic. They share a bougie preoccupation with material things - countertops and porte-cocheres - that feels at odds with the crime in which they are implicated. (After a few close descriptions of kitchen layouts, I began to feel as if I was reading a thriller written by Nora Ephron.) Toward the end, the reader may feel a bit cheated by what has apparently occurred off the page. Although pulling the camera away is a time-tested technique for setting up a great twist, it feels almost unfair that readers are privy to quiet conversations among these characters while they're parked in parallel cars outside the Starbucks drive-through, but are left out of the true moments of revelation and reversal.
In a few more years, perhaps, the granular details of pandemic-era life on display in "Prom Mom" may take on the glamour of historical fiction, especially in the subtle ways couples used quarantine to coerce and manipulate each other. (In her acknowledgments, Lippman shares that the pandemic was the end of her marriage, and we feel that in these pages.) But Lippman, who delivered a similar kaleidoscope of perspectives in "Lady in the Lake" (soon to be an Apple TV Plus limited series starring Natalie Portman), here leaves readers so distanced from her soulless characters that they may not care enough to root for any of them.
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Eliza Nellums is the author of "All That's Bright and Gone" and "The Bone Cay."
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 The Washington Post
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Nellums, Eliza. "Book World: The novel 'Prom Mom' builds on the true story of a teen who killed her baby." Washington Post, 3 Aug. 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A759450849/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8c591090. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lippman, Laura PROM MOM Morrow/HarperCollins (Fiction None) $28.99 7, 25 ISBN: 9780062998064
Prom Mom and Cad Dad reunite decades after the tabloid crime that blew up their lives.
Amber Glass was never Joe Simpson's girlfriend; she was his tutor in high school, and though he was having sex with her, he would not have been going to the prom with her if his main squeeze hadn't dumped him. She hid her pregnancy until prom night, when she gave birth in a hotel bathroom to a 28-week-old preemie, whom she served time in a juvenile facility for murdering. Decades later, she moves back to their shared hometown of Baltimore and opens an outsider art gallery with her notorious name on the marquee. When they reconnect, as was her intention, Joe is adding her to a full dance card: He's married to his college girlfriend, the beautiful Meredith, now a successful plastic surgeon, and he's sleeping with Jordan Altman, a younger real estate agent from his company. What a mess for poor Joe, who is also hit with major financial troubles when the pandemic spoils his plans to flip an unpromising suburban shopping center. Except, who cares about Joe? Lippman seems to have purposely given the reader no one to root for in this unusual psychological suspense novel in which no crimes are committed or revealed until the final pages. All the characters are described as physically attractive but are unappealing otherwise; the relationships of the three female characters to the soulless, creepy, narcissistic Joe are inexplicable. This gives the book a coldblooded quality, a refusal to sentimentalize victims or to make bad actors into romantic antiheroes. As usual, Lippman creates a convincing portrait of a particular sector of Baltimore, this time well-heeled professionals in the northern part of town, and adds New Orleans to the mix as well, with a king cake and a side order of red beans working as plot points.
A character study of pedestrian evil in the Wegmans-and-Peloton class, fascinating in its heartlessness.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Lippman, Laura: PROM MOM." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A751049888/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8cdb1462. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Prom Mom. By Laura Lippman. July 2023.320p. Morrow, $30 (9780062998064); e-book (9780062998088).
Amber Glass is yet another compelling female character brought to life by Lippman. In 1997, Amber was "Prom Mom," an honor student who delivered and killed her baby on prom night. She has lived her life in hiding, struggling to get by, but in September 2019, she returns home to Baltimore to open an art gallery. Ironically, her area of expertise is prison arte odds she will run into Joe Simpson, her "Cad Dad" prom date? She paid a heavy price for her "crime" while he went on to become a successful real-estate investor, married to an accomplished plastic surgeon, living in a big house and enjoying the Range Rover lifestyle. However, Joe walks back into Amber's life almost immediately, and the ensuing cat-and-mouse game (or is it cats and mice?) is presented from ail sides. A cast of extremely self-absorbed characters drive the ominous narrative, which becomes even more fraught with anxiety when Lippman masterfully brings the COVID-19 shutdown into the plot. The head-spinning conclusion will not disappoint. In her acknowledgments, Lippman calls this novel "a very long prequel" to James M. Cain's noir classic Double Indemnity, just as her 2018 novel Sunburn offered homage to The Postman Always Rings Twice. Absolutely brilliant. --Jane Murphy
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Buzz starts early for any new Lippman book, and this one already has the cicadas in high gear.
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Murphy, Jane. "Prom Mom." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 17, 1 May 2023, p. 34. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A748959220/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d1193b59. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lippman, Laura SEASONAL WORK Morrow/HarperCollins (Fiction None) $22.99 1, 4 ISBN: 978-0-06-300003-2
Playful tales of misdeeds great and small from the prolific mystery author.
Lippman fans will be glad to hear that the first two stories in her second collection of short fiction--after Hardly Knew Her (2008)--feature Tess Monaghan, now-retired private investigator and star of a dozen mystery novels. The first, the title story, is about a long con featuring the wise child of a grifter dad; the second is a very Baltimorean story set in a children's bookstore with an ongoing shoplifting problem. The third story features a couple that insiders will recognize as Tess' parents in the years before she was born. Though Judith Monaghan is "The Everyday Housewife," her powers of observation and interest in the lives of others presage her daughter's talents--as one character points out, "It's a thin line between gossip and espionage." The remaining nine stories take on a sparkling array of everyday cheaters, liars, egotists, and sexist pigs. In "Slow Burner," a perfectly pleasant high school teacher "has been spying on [her husband] for so long it's hard to remember what she might know and what she can't know." But as her students point out during their mythology unit, "Hades is a kidnapper, plain and simple. Why should Persephone be punished for eating a few seeds?...To teenagers, the gods are like adults, taking themselves much too seriously, demanding respect they have not earned, changing the rules as it suits them while torturing the puny mortals in their care." Oof. As the author explains in an interesting afterword, the stories--four of which, she proudly notes, do not a include a dead body--were written between 2007 and 2019 and had to be updated slightly to conform to current standards. Sensitivity, however, only goes so far with a crime novelist. When the pandemic comes along in the last story, "Just One More," it only makes murder more acceptable. "Hundreds of people were dying every day. What was one more body on the pile?"
Clever, well-paced, laced with humor and insight--damn fine short stories.
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"Lippman, Laura: SEASONAL WORK." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2022. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A689340174/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e7323c9a. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Seasonal Work. By Laura Lippman. Jan. 2022. 336p. Morrow, $26.99 (9780063000032); e-book, $13.99 (9780063000025).
These 12 stories were written between 2007 and 2019 and appeared in various anthologies, except for "Just One More," a never-previously-published novella about a married couple in the midst of the pandemic who decide to sign up for a dating app just for fun--something to vary the routine of streaming Columbo. This excruciatingly timely story perfectly captures the quotidian sameness of life during lockdown until it corkscrews into something very different. Throughout the collection, Lippman showcases a pitch-perfect sense of how to end a short piece, surprising us with revelatory twists but never doing so in a formulaic, O. Henry way. Also on display is Lippman's ability to create compelling female characters of varying ages, from forty-somethings to teens and children, who combine resolute determination with sometimes-heartbreaking personal vulnerability. Fans will be pleased to find two Tess Monaghan stories here, along with one about the early lives of Tess' parents, Judith and Patrick. The outstanding title story has Tess, still a reporter before launching her PI business, exposing an audacious Christmas scam but being outmaneuvered by the teenager she attempts to rescue. (Lippman's great feel for teen characters inspires hope that a YA thriller might be in her future.) All in all, this is a first-rate collection, an obvious must for the legions of Lippman fans, but also great reading for anyone who savors short crime fiction.--Bill Ott
YA: The several stories featuring savvy teens make this collection an excellent crossover choice. BO.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association
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Ott, Bill. "Seasonal Work." Booklist, vol. 118, no. 9-10, 1 Jan. 2022, p. 43. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A692710694/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0e0b8f51. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Byline: Maureen Corrigan
By Laura Lippman
Morrow. 320 pp. $28.99
- - -
Years ago, I interviewed Mary Higgins Clark, "the queen of suspense" onstage in the District. One moment has always stayed with me from that night.
Near the end of our conversation, Clark turned to the audience and asked: "If you were alone in an isolated house on a dark and stormy night, what's the most frightening sound you might hear? The crowd began shouting suggestions: "A scream!" "Footsteps!" "Maniacal laughter!" Clark finally held her hands up and announced the answer: "The sound of a toilet flushing."
The audience, as one, gasped.
Therein lay Clark's genius. She recognized that the everyday turned eerie was far more unsettling than any threat from the outer limits of experience.
In "Dream Girl," Laura Lippman shows that she, too, has a shrewd appreciation for the mundane turned macabre.
"Dream Girl," Lippman's latest stand-alone suspense novel, is set in a fictional penthouse apartment in one of those luxury towers that have violated the skyline of so many cities in recent years. This particular lofty eyesore stands in Baltimore, Lippman's hometown and the site of most of her novels. We savvy readers sense that something is off from the opening description of famous novelist Gerry Andersen's lavish digs:
"Gerry Andersen's new apartment is a topsy-turvy affair - living area on the second floor, bedrooms below. The brochure - it is the kind of apartment that had its own brochure when it went on the market in 2018 - boasted of 360-degree views, but that was pure hype. ... Nothing means anything anymore, Gerry has decided. No one uses words correctly and if you call them on it, they claim that words are fungible, that it's oppressive and prissy not to let words mean whatever the speaker wishes them to mean.
"Take the name of this building, the Vue at Locust Point. What is a (BEGIN ITAL)vue(END ITAL)? And isn't the view what one sees from the building, not the building itself?"
Isn't this delicious? A cranky novelist ensconced in a swanky setting, railing at the idiocies of the contemporary world. As Lippman robustly imagines him, Literary-Lion-in-Winter Gerry owes something to Philip Roth (as well as his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman). There's the brilliance, the devastating humor, the complicated sexual history with women, and the fraught relationship with his mother.
But, a more explicit literary presence here is that of Stephen King, as "Dream Girl" swiftly morphs into Nightmare. At the end of the first chapter, Gerry stumbles over the rowing machine in his bedroom, skids to the edge of the "floating staircase" that connects the floors of this "topsy-turvy" duplex, "windmilling" down the steps, landing at the bottom "a crooked broken thing." There he lies alone throughout the night until his young assistant, Victoria, arrives in the morning.
For months, Gerry will be imprisoned in that wind-whipped, isolated penthouse, his only constant visitors Victoria and a dull night nurse named Aileen. During that time, Gerry will be tormented by letters (that mysteriously disappear) and dead-of-night phone calls from a woman who claims to be the real-life heroine whose story Gerry appropriated for his breakthrough novel, also called "Dream Girl." (This plotline makes Lippman's novel the latest of many suspense novels published this year that are centered on a plagiarism theme. I'm thinking specifically of "The Other Black Girl," "Palace of the Drowned," "The Plot" and "A Lonely Man." Clearly, anxiety is in the air about who gets to tell whose stories.) Whenever the phone rings, Aileen, the night nurse, claims she doesn't hear it. In his medicated state Gerry can barely think straight. Is he imagining this harassment? Is he being gaslighted? Think Stephen King's "Misery" starring Zuckerman, um, "Bound."
With each stand-alone novel she writes, Lippman triumphantly turns in a different direction: "Sunburn" was a sexy noir winking at James M. Cain; "The Lady in the Lake" (winking even more broadly at Raymond Chandler) was a superb historical evocation of 1960s Baltimore crossed with a crime story; and now Lippman has poked a toe into horror. The source is that high-rise Gerry is marooned in, cut off from the street life of the city below. In a moment sure to tickle fans of Lippman's long-running Tess Monaghan series, Gerry tries to hire the journalist turned private detective for surveillance to monitor those phone calls he thinks he's receiving. Tess turns up at Gerry's place and ultimately turns down the job. As she explains in a conversation, the reason is the penthouse itself:
"'It sounds so woo-woo, but I've learned to respect my intuition about such things. I couldn't - I couldn't spend a lot of time in this apartment. It gives me the creeps. ... I don't know, maybe it's like the Spielberg movie where it turns out a grave has been desecrated. Only the thing that's buried beneath your beautiful apartment is jobs.'
"'Jobs?'
"'There were silos here. Grain silos. There were jobs all over this peninsula. Baltimore's citizens made things. ... I know I should be happy, seeing these big apartment buildings going up. It's property taxes; my kid goes to public school. But this place gives me the creeps, big time.'"
Socially conscious (the #MeToo movement makes a decisive entrance into the plot) and packed with humor, ghosts and narrative turns of the screw, Lippman's "Dream Girl" is indeed a dream of a novel for suspense lovers and fans of literary satire alike.
- - -
Maureen Corrigan, who is the book critic for the NPR program "Fresh Air," teaches literature at Georgetown University.
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Corrigan, Maureen. "Book World: Lippman's 'Dream Girl' turns mundane to macabre." Washington Post, 12 July 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A668229184/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6bb69927. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Dream Girl. By Laura Lippman. June 2021.320p. Morrow, $28.99 (9780062390073); e-book, $15.99 (9780062390080).
Just as Lippman's Sunburn (2018) offered a kind of homage to James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, so her latest standalone pays respect to Stephen King's Misery. Gerry Andersen, a best-selling novelist, is bedridden in his Baltimore penthouse after a freakish fall, tended by an assistant and a night nurse. Then the phone calls and letters start, purportedly from a fictional character, Aubrey, the heroine of Gerry's breakthrough novel, Dream Girl, who claims she will expose how he stole her story without attribution. Knowing that Aubrey was a product of his imagination, Gerry is first baffled then panicked by this intrusion into his life, especially as there are no records of the phone calls. Has Gerry imagined the whole thing? Lippman brilliandy moves back and forth in time, gradually building the narcissistic Gerry into a confoundingly complex character, both repellent and vulnerable, a man whose ill treatment of the multiple women in his life suggests numerous possibilities for the person behind the newly arisen Aubrey. But don't expect to figure this one out; Lippman never stops twisting the plot into a deliciously intricate pretzel, right up to the jaw-dropping finale. This is both a beguiling look at the mysteries of authorship and a powerful #MeToo novel, but that's only the tip of a devilishly jagged iceberg that asks us to look very deeply into the hearts of its multidimensional characters.--Bill Ott
HIGH-DEMAND BACKST0RY: Expect Lippman's latest to be among this summer's biggest novels, aided by massive social-media outreach.
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Ott, Bill. "Dream Girl." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 17, 1 May 2021, p. 32. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A662304558/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a96ac2b2. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lippman, Laura DREAM GIRL Morrow/HarperCollins (Fiction None) $28.99 6, 22 ISBN: 978-0-06-239007-3
An injured literary lion is held captive in his waterfront Baltimore condo.
There's a moment in Lippman's latest novel when her delightful series detective, Tess Monaghan, walks into the room and, for a moment, it seems everything could be all right. Unfortunately, it's just a cameo, and we're soon back with our uninspiring cast of three: novelist Gerry Andersen, who's had a debilitating fall, and the two women taking care of him, personal assistant Victoria and night nurse Aileen. At 61, Andersen has never repeated the success of his prizewinning bestseller, Dream Girl, and it's been quite a while since he wrote anything at all. He moved to Baltimore to take care of his mother in her last days, but even after her unexpectedly speedy death, he didn't return to New York, where the last of his many bad decisions involving women is waiting to shake him down for whatever she can get. This ploy doesn't work, and the woman shows up in Baltimore. Even more distressing, Gerry gets a phone call from a woman claiming to be the inspiration for Dream Girl, only, as he's told everyone for years, there is no real person who played that role. All the while, no matter what happens, Andersen's mind generates a literary or cultural connection, from Pete Townshend's solo album to Ben Jonson's plays to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Some are explained, some aren't, so the reader sometimes feels as stupid as Gerry thinks everyone is. It's too bad this book has to be compared to Misery, because despite similarities in setup, it's no Misery. All the reveals come after you have figured them out; the murders are played for camp. The most gaspworthy moment in the book comes in the author's note: "If you want to play the game of figuring out who Gerry Andersen is, check out the author photo on this book." No! It can't be.
In her 25th novel, Lippman messes up a near-perfect batting average.
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"Lippman, Laura: DREAM GIRL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A658194502/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c62b65f7. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lippman, Laura. My Life as a Villainess: Essays. Morrow. May 2020.288p. ISBN 9780063007154. $27.99. LIT
Beloved crime fiction writer and avid tweetmeister Lippman makes an unconvincing case for her villainy in this collection. The essays, some new, some previously published, are overall a delight. She opens strong with "The Whole 60," in which she revels in her power and glory as she hits a milestone birthday. Following pieces meander through her life and times: her first career, as a journalist in Texas and in her hometown of Baltimore; an unsuccessful first marriage; a second successful marriage and motherhood at fiftysomething; ruminations on family and friends; her tendency to let down friends (readers may not be wholly convinced that she is "a shitty friend"); that time she was called in to the principal's office for subtweeting about mean girls who made her daughter miserable. In the final piece, "Men Explain The Wire to Me," Lippman defdy skewers the male fans of her husband David Simon's revered Baltimore-based TV show. A piece about how she helped Simon make friends with the late TV personality/chef Anthony Bourdain is moving and humorous as well. VERDICT Fans of Lippman's novels (The Lady in the Lake) and her Twitter followers will gobble up this short collection and beg for more nonfiction from this gifted storyteller. [See Prepub Alert, 11/11/19.]--Liz French, Library Journal
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French, Liz. "Lippman, Laura. My Life as a Villainess: Essays." Library Journal, vol. 145, no. 4, Apr. 2020, p. 96. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A619849135/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d45dac07. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lippman, Laura MY LIFE AS A VILLAINESS Morrow/HarperCollins (NonFiction None) $27.99 5, 5 ISBN: 978-0-06-300715-4
In her first book of nonfiction, bestselling crime novelist Lippman gathers 15 essays on motherhood, family life, and her writing career.
Except for the six months after college when she worked part-time at “the finest Italian restaurant in Waco, Texas,” Baltimore native Lippman always earned a living by her pen. First, she was a newspaper reporter who eventually went to work for the Baltimore Sun. Then, in 1997, she fulfilled a childhood fantasy and became a novelist. Here, the author offers a collection of personal essays that she started writing in 2017, in part to overcome a “distaste for the first-person pronoun.” Mining personal experiences for material, Lippman provides humorous insights into her life as a writer, mother, and wife to acclaimed TV writer and producer David Simon. She opens the book with an essay about finding self-acceptance at age 60. After spending too much time struggling with her body image, she finally learned to say “the most infuriating [thing]” possible for a middle-aged woman: that she actually liked the way she looked. A positive self-image was the gift she wanted to give her young daughter, whom she discusses in “Game of Crones.” Bucking convention, Lippman became a first-time mother to an adopted daughter while in her 50s, which led to numerous questions about whether the child was her granddaughter. A dedicated career woman, the author reveals how motherhood “made me less robotic [and] more inclined toward improvisation and spontaneity” and marked the beginning of the most successful period in her writing career. Yet for all her fame, Lippman still sees herself as a “happy gherkin alongside a big dill,” Simon. Showrunner for TV cult favorite The Wire, Simon still keeps “pushing, pushing, pushing” and inspiring Lippman to never “live inside…success.” Candid and quirky, this book will have special appeal to fans of her crime fiction.
A wryly observed collection from a reliably good writer.
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"Lippman, Laura: MY LIFE AS A VILLAINESS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A617193022/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f786b4f3. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
HOST: MARY LOUISE KELLY
MARY LOUISE KELLY: At the heart of Laura Lippman's new novel are two murders - one a girl, one a young woman; one white, one black - both in 1960s Baltimore. In an author's note - very end of the book, Page 339 - Lippman writes, quote, "The book's small details are largely factual, except when they are not." Laura Lippman's book is "Lady In The Lake," and she joins me now from our member station WYPR in Baltimore.
Laura Lippman, welcome.
LAURA LIPPMAN: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: So let's start with the factual. This pair of murders in your novel were inspired by two real-life cases from 1969?
LIPPMAN: That's correct. I had known about the death of the girl who, in real life, was known as Esther Lebowitz since I was 10 years old. It happened when I was 10 years old. And when you're 10 years old and an 11-year-old girl has gone missing and then found murdered a couple of days later, it makes a big impression on you. And...
KELLY: And this was your town. You grew up in Baltimore.
LIPPMAN: Right. And I was the daughter of a newspaperman. So we got The Baltimore Sun in the morning - The Sun, as it was known then - and in the evening, we got The Evening Sun. And it was solved quickly. It didn't have that much suspense to it. The other case involved the disappearance of a woman named Shirley Parker, whose body was found in the fountain in the lake at the zoo. The cause of her death could not be determined because of the condition of her body at the time it was found. And until I went to work at The Baltimore Sun, I never heard about it.
And when I decided to write a novel set in the '60s, I very much wanted to look at these two different deaths and how different they had been portrayed in media. And I was like, well, what could possibly tie them together? I didn't want to create some huge coincidence. So I thought, well, a woman, an investigator, someone who cared about both deaths could be the thing that connected them.
KELLY: And I will fill in the blanks here just a little bit for people who have not read the book yet. Your protagonist, the woman who investigates, is a woman named Maddie Schwartz, who is this beautiful, bored 37-year-old housewife who decides one day to leave her husband and go be a crime reporter, which left you with the task of writing realistically about a woman in what must have been then very much a man's world - a big-city newsroom in the 1960s. How did you go about doing that?
LIPPMAN: I started by getting in touch with colleagues of my father who were still alive. My own father, who came to work at The Sun in 1965 as an editorial writer, had been gone since December of 2014. I was really interested in the feel of the newsroom. What did it sound like? What did it look like? What did Baltimore look like in 1966? I was here, but I was 7. So I didn't assume I knew anything. I first came into a newsroom when - well, it would have been the late '70s, early '80s in my college internships.
KELLY: Did the newsroom then fill recognizable to you now? I mean, as you nodded to, you worked at The Sun for a dozen years or so. That was your kind of pathway to then writing crime fiction.
LIPPMAN: I think so. I understood the deadlines, and I certainly knew the attitude. The thing that I've been asked about - and it's kind of depressing - and people would say, well, how did you find a way of getting into the mindset of how women were treated in 1966? And I would say, you know, I think that's one of the things that had changed the least (laughter) when I started at newspapers in 1980 (ph).
KELLY: Really? Yeah. You have talked, I've seen, about how a lot of crime novelists are very clever about sneaking issues into their work, and their gender is very much - gender issues on these pages, but also race and religion. Your protagonist is Jewish, and that's a factor - income inequality. You've got all these big issues pulsing through these pages. Was that intentional? Are you trying to get us to confront stuff that it's hard to talk about in our society today?
LIPPMAN: I think it's been intentional for a while. I think the best crime novelist for a while figured out that the social novel didn't seem to have much traction in literature, so why don't we just go ahead and pick up the pieces of that? And it makes crime fiction better when it has those things going on. And then if you're writing about a place, you have to be true to the place. I can't write about Baltimore and not write about race. That would be insane. That would be not about Baltimore.
KELLY: And that must be what keeps it interesting to you, I imagine. This is your 20-something-th (ph) novel, and you're still going, and something still - you've still got a bee in your bonnet about something you want to get out there on the pages.
LIPPMAN: Oh, yes. I mean, basically, I sit down every year and I think, what am I really, really interested in right now? And I sat down in 2017 and I was interested in 1966. I wasn't particularly thinking about newspapers. But this is where Maddie belonged. I never set out to do this. I set out simply to write a novel about a woman who wanted to matter. And I think that was very much a story of that time.
And my own mother, she went back to school about this time, and she decided to become a librarian. I think the world in the mid-1960s was filled with women who were thinking, this can't be it; I think I would like to do something more with my life.
KELLY: Speaking of newspapers, you dedicate the book to the five staffers of the Capital Gazette who were killed in the newsroom shooting last summer in Annapolis. And you write about the timing of that, that you had just turned in the first draft of "Lady In The Lake," and the very next day, that shooting happened. I wondered why it was important to you to honor them that way, to dedicate the book to those five?
LIPPMAN: Rob Hiaasen was one of my best friends at The Baltimore Sun. We sat about three feet from each other. The day I sold my first book, he was the first person who knew about it. I was in my car, headed to the beach town where my mother lives, and I had just crossed the Bay Bridge, stopped for lunch with my daughter. And I called my mom to say that we were about 90 minutes away.
KELLY: Yeah.
LIPPMAN: And she said, oh, I thought you might get slowed down in Annapolis; there was a shooting. And I said, oh, where? And in that split second before she told me, I was so careless, so numb, so accepting of this reality that there are shootings. And then she said it was at the newspaper, not knowing that Rob worked there.
I happen to believe that Rob and his four colleagues were very much victims of a coarsened rhetoric aimed at the media in this country. I believe words matter. I can't do what I do and not think that. I left newspapers almost 20 years ago. And I love being a novelist, but I am so proud to have been a newspaper reporter, and I am so proud of my friends who are still at it and still working in a really tough climate and doing amazing, amazing work. And I don't want to see anything thwart that or get in its way.
KELLY: I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend, of your friend Rob. Laura Lippman, thank you
LIPPMAN: Thank you.
KELLY: Laura Lippman. Her new book is titled "Lady In The Lake."
(SOUNDBITE OF KYSON SONG, "EVERY HIGH")
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"Real Disappearances Are The Premise For Laura Lippman's 'Lady In The Lake'." All Things Considered, 25 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A594917758/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=744f183b. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lady in the LakeBy Laura Lippman
In a 1945 essay in which he dismissed most detective and mystery fiction as little better than crossword puzzles, the critic Edmund Wilson asked a question that still rankles readers who enjoy the genre: "Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?" The answer, over the 75 or so years since, seems to be "millions of people do." That would include me. I also care who killed Eunetta "Cleo" Sherwood and Tessie Fine. Theirs are the murders investigated by Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz in Laura Lippman's haunting new novel.
What makes this book special, even extraordinary, is that the crossword puzzle aspect is secondary. Lippman, who is the closest writer America has to Ruth Rendell, is after bigger game. The arc of Maddie's character - her mid-1960s "journey," if you like - reflects the gulf which then existed between what women were expected to be and what they aspired to be.
When Maddie leaves her conventional and basically uninteresting husband to strike out on her own, she remains a Mrs. pending her divorce, but after going to work at an afternoon newspaper and taking a lover, she thinks of herself as something else, a thing for which she has no name. Ms. - the form of address that would create a narrow bridge between Mrs. and Miss - was then not in common usage.
Set in Baltimore, Lippman's home stomping grounds, "Lady in the Lake" covers just over a year, from October 1965 to November 1966. Spiro Agnew will soon be elected governor, Maddie's middle-class Jewish enclave is centered in the suburb of Pikesville and the town supports three thriving newspapers. Maddie goes to work for The Star after she and a friend discover the body of Tessie Fine, a young girl whose neck was broken. After pointing out a flaw in the supposed killer's story and coaxing him into correspondence (Maddie is good with men), she finally gets a byline - but only after she's rewritten by Bob Bauer, the paper's popular columnist. Her paltry reward for this scoop is a job as the mail-screening assistant to Don Heath, a timeserver who writes a feature called Helpline. "The real joke is," Don confides, "I have the stupidest column in the paper, but it's also the most popular."
[ In their "By the Book" interviews, Harlan Coben, Gillian Flynn, Mindy Kaling, Roxane Gay, John Waters, Megan Abbott, Anna Quindlen and Tana French all recommended Laura Lippman titles. ]
One of the letters Maddie screens is a complaint about the lights being out in the fountain at the center of Druid Hill Park. It's not juicy enough for the Helpline column, so she passes it on to the Department of Public Works guys, who find the problem's grim cause: A decomposing body, dumped in the fountain months before, has shorted out the wiring. Thus does Cleo Sherwood become the Lady in the Lake, and Maddie Schwartz's new obsession.
Maddie believes she's at least partially solved the murder of Tessie Fine (she's not entirely right about that and will suffer the consequences), and wants to feel that high again. More, she wants to beat and trick and charm her way past the men who are trying to keep her from fulfilling what she sees as her destiny: becoming a columnist in her own right.
Her pursuit of that destiny is far from lovely - she will badly hurt one person who loves her before she's done - but the times weren't lovely. After a fruitless attempt to rattle a wealthy businessman who may have been Cleo's lover, Maddie muses, "The men made the rules, broke the rules and tossed the girls away." Maddie refuses to be tossed. More than one person around her pays for that. Lippman's point - which takes this book far beyond the works of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout, although Lippman does not fail to honor her genre roots - is that Maddie also pays, and in blood.
Interspersed with Maddie's story are a chorus of voices straight out of "Our Town," most of them unhappy. Don Heath fears he's suffering from dementia. The newscaster Wally Wright (actually Weiss) still carries a torch - and a resentment - for Maddie, whom he once dated in high school. The political fixer and the nightclub owner are unhappily closeted gay men, so-called "Baltimore bachelors." The only optimistic voice we hear is that of the legendary Baltimore Orioles outfielder Paul Blair, and he seems unnecessary here from a narrative perspective (so, for that matter, does the masher who fondles Maddie's knee during a movie). Even Cleo Sherwood speaks from beyond the grave, sort of like Joe Gillis in "Sunset Boulevard," another murdered floater. That parallel may or may not have been intended.
It's the Lady in the Lake who opens the story, in fact, and it's Cleo's ambivalence about her place in what James Brown called a man's, man's, man's world that sets the tone of this angry but craftily crafted book. "Men need us more than we need them," Cleo says on the first page, but almost immediately contradicts herself: "A woman is only as good as the man at her side."
Maddie, victimized by a much older man while still in her teens, is similarly conflicted; although Cleo is black and Maddie is a white middle-class Jew, they are eerily alike. Maddie uses her looks to flirt her way into the newspaper business, but must keep her actual (and very powerful) sex drive carefully hidden, even after she leaves her husband and son, which she does with coldblooded calculation. Lippman walks a fine line, balancing a cracking good mystery with the story of a not always admirable woman working to stand on her own. Lippman never loses sight of Maddie's options and her obstacles. Both turn out to be men.
"Women ⦠learned early to surrender any idea that life was a series of fair exchanges," Maddie thinks. "A girl discovered almost in the cradle that things would never be fair." Maybe not, but Cleo, the Lady in the Lake, sees another side, pointing out that the source of both of Maddie's scoops was a man: "Wasn't it, Maddie Schwartz? A woman like you - there's always going to be a man."
Although Lippman's heart clearly rests with Maddie and her struggle to become more than just Mrs. Milton Schwartz, and although she gives a splendid picture of the newspaper business in an era when newspapers mattered a lot more than they do today, she never loses touch with the twin mysteries at the center of her story. We care about Maddie, sure, but we also want to know who helped Tessie Fine's killer move Tessie's body from the place where she was murdered. And as for the murder of Cleo Sherwood? Apologies to Mr. Wilson, but we care quite a bit. Lippman answers all outstanding questions with a totally cool double twist that your reviewer - a veteran reader of mysteries - never saw coming.
There are even glints of humor, a trick Ruth Rendell rarely managed. When Maddie asks a bartender which Baltimore paper he prefers, he tells her he likes The Beacon. "It's the thickest," he says, "and I've got a parakeet."
Stephen King's next novel, "The Institute," will be published in September. Lady in the Lake By Laura Lippman 337 pp. William Morrow/HarperCollins. $26.99.
PHOTO: (PHOTOGRAPH BY Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 International Herald Tribune
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King, Stephen. "Stephen King Reviews Laura Lippman's New Novel, 'Lady in the Lake'." International New York Times, 25 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A595682448/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c334fce0. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Byline: Jen Michalski
Lady in the Lake: A Novel
By Laura Lippman
William Morrow. 352 pp. $26.99
---
Everyone knows the dangers of being in the news business these days, but Laura Lippman's new novel "Lady in the Lake" is a powerful reminder that the search for the truth has always been a precarious and underappreciated one. In an eerie and heartbreaking coincidence, the day after Lippman turned in the final draft of her book, five members of the staff of the Capital Gazette - Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith, and Wendi Winters - were killed by a gunman in its Annapolis (Md.) newsroom. Lippman was friends with Hiaasen, and in the acknowledgments of the book, she dedicates what she calls her "weird love letter to Baltimore newspapers of the 60s" to them. Her book is that and more.
Inspired by the unsolved death of Shirley Parker, a barmaid and secretary whose body was found in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park in June of 1969, Lippman's ambitious novel weaves some 20 points of view into a seamless, vivid whole. The novel demonstrates that Lippman, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, is both a skilled journalist and a masterful novelist.
The story centers on two narrators: Cleo Sherwood, a fictionalized version of Parker, and Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz, a fictional Jewish housewife in her late 30s who decides to walk out on her rote, suburban life and find her own path. The two women's stories come together in a most unusual way.
When a young neighborhood girl goes missing, Maddie and a new friend, Judith, search for her. Maddie's instincts lead them to an amazing discovery, and, for Maddie, a purpose. She gets a small apartment downtown, a black boyfriend, Fergie, who happens to be a cop, and a job at the afternoon newspaper, the Star, where she answers readers' questions in a public help column. When she follows up on a letter to get the lights at the Druid Hill Park Fountain turned back on, Cleo's body, much like Parker's in 1969, is discovered inside the fountain.
Although no one is interested in the suspicious death of a young black woman (similar to Parker, whose mysterious death garnered little attention in the main newspapers of record), Cleo becomes Maddie's personal beacon. Maddie works after hours to talk to those close to Cleo, while also receiving tips from Fergie. As the stakes become higher, Maddie - stepping on toes and forgoing protocol out of determination, naivete, or a little bit of both - endangers not only her own life but others.
There's a lovely dance of female leads at the heart of the novel. Maddie and Cleo are from different worlds, but their struggle for independence during a time of barriers to women - racism for Cleo and sexism for Maddie - bind them in a Chinese finger trap that tugs tighter as they assert themselves and love who they want. Lippman isn't a stranger to stories involving race (see "Butchers Hill" and "Every Secret Thing"), and here she casts a wide net in the quest for authenticity, including the perspectives of Cleo's family and other traditionally underrepresented voices.
And although Maddie is given more page time than Cleo, Cleo's desires feel surprisingly clearer and more relatable, even if she is narrating from beyond the grave. Part of it be may that Cleo's passages are in the first person and Maddie's in the third, but part of it has to do with how closely Maddie guards her relationship with Fergie and other secrets while examining (thoughtlessly, at times) every detail of Cleo's. It doesn't help that Maddie's other secret - something that happened before her marriage to her soon-to-be ex-husband - is eluded to but not revealed until much later in the novel, where it feels an afterthought rather than a key to her motivations.
Unlike Parker, whose 1969 death still remains unsolved, Lippman builds a slow-burning, precise case for Cleo's murderer before throwing the reader for a loop in the end, reminding us how much of solving mysteries is being in the right (or wrong) place at the right time.
In the end, though, it's the kaleidoscope of perspectives, an intricate quilt of 1960s Baltimore - newspaper staff, bartenders, waitresses, police officers and local athletes, many of them based on real people - that illuminates "The Lady in the Lake." Lippman writes with a nuanced understanding of character, and each voice is distinct. (Lippman, ever meticulous, even consulted a baseball historian when capturing the point of view of a certain beloved 1960s Baltimore Orioles outfielder.) And although some characters don't seem to add much to the mystery of Cleo's death, Lippman uses them to show the many layers a reporter must sift through while pursuing a lead. "The Lady of the Lake" is more than a "weird love letter to Baltimore newspapers" - it is an earnest and beautiful homage to a city and its people.
---
Michalski, a Baltimore native, is the author of several novels and short story collections, including "The Tide King" and "The Summer She Was Under Water."
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 The Washington Post
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Michalski, Jen. "Book World: Laura Lippman's love letter to Baltimore and its people." Washington Post, 22 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A594121596/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=edb73317. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lippman, Laura LADY IN THE LAKE Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $26.99 7, 23 ISBN: 978-0-06-239001-1
Baltimore in the 1960s is the setting for this historical fiction about a real-life unsolved drowning.
In her most ambitious work to date, Lippman (Sunburn, 2018, etc.) tells the story of Maddie Schwartz, an attractive 37-year-old Jewish housewife who abruptly leaves her husband and son to pursue a long-held ambition to be a journalist, and Cleo Sherwood, an African-American cocktail waitress about whom little is known. Sherwood's body was found in a lake in a city park months after she disappeared, and while no one else seems to care enough to investigate, Maddie becomes obsessed--partly due to certain similarities she perceives between her life and Cleo's, partly due to her faith in her own detective skills. The story unfolds from Maddie's point of view as well as that of Cleo's ghost, who seems to be watching from behind the scenes, commenting acerbically on Maddie's nosing around like a bull in a china shop after getting a job at one of the city papers. Added to these are a chorus of Baltimore characters who make vivid one-time appearances: a jewelry store clerk, an about-to-be-murdered schoolgirl, "Mr. Helpline," a bartender, a political operative, a waitress, a Baltimore Oriole, the first African-American female policewoman (these last two are based on real people), and many more. Maddie's ambition propels her forward despite the cost to others, including the family of the deceased and her own secret lover, a black policeman. Lippman's high-def depiction of 1960s Baltimore and the atmosphere of the newsroom at that time--she interviewed associates of her father, Baltimore Sun journalist Theo Lippman Jr., for the details--ground the book in fascinating historical fact.The literary gambit she balances atop that foundation--the collage of voices--works impressively, showcasing the author's gift for rhythms of speech. The story is bigger than the crime, and the crime is bigger than its solution, making Lippman's skill as a mystery novelist work as icing on the cake.
The racism, classism, and sexism of 50 years ago wrapped up in a stylish, sexy, suspenseful period drama about a newsroom and the city it covers.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Lippman, Laura: LADY IN THE LAKE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A582144247/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b969c7f5. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
LIPPMAN, Laura. Liza Jane & the Dragon, illus. by Kate Samworth. 32p. Akashic. Oct. 2018. Tr $16.95. ISBN 9781617756610.
PreS-Gr 2--Liza Jane is a young girl with a very nice life. She is told this every day by her parents and while she does like her canopy bed, and getting pizza delivered on Friday nights, she does not like it when her parents don't listen or interrupt her. She decides to fire them and advertises for new ones. As luck would have it, a dragon responds. He is everything she's ever wanted; he listens to what she says, never interrupts, and most importantly, gets mad when she gets mad. The first night they order a pizza, and it's delivered terribly late and cold, so the dragon sets the pizza delivery truck on fire. When Liza Jane is late for school and gets in trouble, the attendance officer's desk is engulfed in flames. Liza Jane admonishes the dragon that he really can't behave like this and his droll response is: "Hey, I'm a dragon." They live together for quite some time, ordering pizza every night and living in a slovenly fashion until the little girl realizes that not only is she heartily sick of pizza, but she's alienated everyone with this pyroinaniac dragon in tow. She once again puts up a parents wanted sign, and her original ones return. This appealing debut picture book is enriched by the strategic use of color in Samworth's dreamy illustrations, and kids will roar at the dragon's outrageous antics. VERDICT This delightfully quirky read deserves a place in most collections.--Amy Nolan, St. Joseph Public Library, MI
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Nolan, Amy. "LIPPMAN, Laura. Liza Jane & the Dragon." School Library Journal, vol. 64, no. 11, Nov. 2018, p. 61. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A561449322/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ffa0a47b. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Lippman, Laura LIZA JANE & THE DRAGON Black Sheep Press (Children's Fiction) $16.95 10, 2 ISBN: 978-1-61775-661-0
A young girl thinks that a dragon will be a better caregiver than her mom and dad.
Liza Jane's parents tell her that she's very lucky. She has all the trappings of a happy-enough childhood: a canopy bed, a goldfish, and pizza on Fridays. "Yet: people didn't listen to her. People interrupted her. People didn't care about her feelings. And by 'people'--we mean her parents." The mixed-race child decides to fire her parental unit, and after putting up signs around the neighborhood ("Wanted: A MOM + A DAD"), she hires a dragon who claims "I can do both jobs." But the dragon can't cook, can't brush Liza Jane's hair, and "if anything made Liza Jane mad or frustrated, the dragon set it on fire." The illustrations are subdued watercolors; Liza Jane and the dragon are always rendered in bold colors, set against a retro sepia backdrop, with other splashes of color indicating the focal point of each spread. The text is awkward and clunky, using an overwhelmingly didactic tone for a story lacking any clear or compelling takeaways. "After two weeks, or maybe it was six months, or maybe it was four years," Liza Jane sends the dragon away and rehires her parents. "She tells them every day how lucky they are."
Those seeking feminist-tinged picture books should look elsewhere. (Picture book. 5-9)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Lippman, Laura: LIZA JANE & THE DRAGON." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A548138060/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6567a3ec. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Sunburn
Laura Lippman
William Morrow & Company
c/o HarperCollins Publishers
195 Broadway New York, New York 10007
www.harpercollins.com
9780062389923, $26.99/33.50 CA$, Hardcover, 304 pp.
9780062390127 $39.99 (audiobook) www.harperaudio.com
From the publisher: Laura Lippman returns with a superb novel of psychological suspense about a pair of lovers with the best intentions and the worst luck: two people locked in a passionate yet uncompromising game of cat and mouse. But instead of rules, this game has dark secrets, forbidden desires, inevitable betrayals--and cold-blooded murder. One is playing a long game. But which one? They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he's also passing through. Yet she stays and he stays--drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other--dangerous, even lethal secrets. Then someone dies. Was it an accident, or part of a plan? By now, Adam and Polly are so ensnared in each other's lives and lies that neither one knows how to get away--or even if they want to. Is their love strong enough to withstand the truth, or will it ultimately destroy them? Something--or someone--has to give. Which one will it be?
Part One of this book, headed "Smoke" [Part Two is headed "Fire"] finds Mark, 38 years old, who spots Polly, "a [sunburned] redhead well into her thirties ... sitting on a barstool, forty-five miles inland, in a town where strangers seldom stop on a Sunday evening." They are both in a bar-slash-restaurant, the High-Ho. He is a handsome private detective, guy who, in his downtime, likes to hunt deer ["Bow and arrow] who takes a job as a short order cook at the High-Ho. The redhead who has grabbed his attention takes a job there as a barmaid. When he asks for her name, the response she gives him is Polly Costello. The reader soon discovers that she is also Pauline, who has left her husband and three-year-old daughter. She and Gregg had met when she was 31, married quickly when she discovered she was pregnant, but the marriage went bad just as quickly when his abusive nature became very apparent. Her name had been Pauline Ditmars, then Pauline Hansen when she married Gregg, then Pauline Smith when she left him and their daughter. Now living as Polly Costello. One night soon after "a short, squat woman with a butch haircut" comes into the High-Ho and Mark knows instantly that "she's a private investigator and that she's looking for the woman who's calling herself Polly Costello." Since that's what he himself is doing there. Both the woman, Sue, and Mark have each been hired to track her down. Although a risky plan, Mark and Polly very shortly become intimately involved. Mark has been hired to find the woman who left her husband [a dirty cop, btw] and her child "in the lurch" then stole money from the kid when the guy died, and disappeared with the life insurance. So no one here has a clear conscience. But when Polly's friend, Cath, goes to Polly's apartment looking for her, and dies when the apartment blows up, there is a lot for the ensuing investigation to find. No one here looks very innocent.
The novel is but the latest where the reader gets to know the characters, to the point where one would like to meet her/him off the page, in real life as it were, and get to know them better, such a wonderful job having been done by this author in their creation. The same could be said about this book as a whole, keeping the reader turning pages more and more quickly. Highly recommended.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
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Feit, Gloria. "Sunburn." MBR Bookwatch, Mar. 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A536746460/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8bd5cd36. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Byline: Patrick Anderson
Sunburn
By Laura Lippman
Morrow. 292 pp. $26.99
---
Laura Lippman, whose novels have won numerous crime-fiction prizes, calls "Sunburn" her first venture into noir, in part inspired by her admiration for James M. Cain's classic "The Postman Always Rings Twice." It is indeed a dark tale with no shortage of sex and violence. It is also an impressive achievement, particularly in her creation of Polly Costello, a sometimes lethal woman who may or may not be more sinned against than sinning.
Polly, although blessed with a happy childhood, had the misfortune to be impregnated at 17 by a man six years her senior. She married him, and he soon became a drunken, corrupt Baltimore cop who beat her. When he threatened to kill her and their child, who has cerebral palsy, Polly responded by stabbing him in the heart while he slept.
In court, her battered-wife defense failed, and she was sentenced to life in prison. Four years later, the governor pardoned her. Freed, Polly again married because of a pregnancy, again regretted her decision and finally set out to escape. It helped that she knew something her husband didn't: that with the help of a crooked insurance man, Polly had sued the hospital where her first daughter was born and won a settlement that should net her $2 million. Her daughter was by then a ward of the state.
Early in the novel, on a beautiful spring day, Polly and her husband and younger daughter are on a trip to a beach near Ocean City, Md. (That's where sunburn comes in). Polly uses this as an opportunity to flee: She ditches her family and catches a ride that leaves her stranded in a small town in Delaware. Polly is broke - her lawyer has yet to deliver Polly's share of the settlement - so she takes a job as a waitress. Her plan is to win a divorce, collect her money and retrieve both her daughters.
One day, a good-looking fellow named Adam Bosk turns up in the restaurant. He says he's a traveling salesman, but soon he's so smitten with Polly that - being an excellent cook - he takes a job there. "He's a Ken doll kind of guy, if Ken had a great year-round tan," Lippman explains. Polly didn't want to fall in love, but Adam is clearly a step up from the two men she married.
In truth, Adam is not a traveling salesman; he's a private detective sent to find Polly by the crooked insurance man, who wouldn't mind seeing her dead. But Adam's job was to find her, not kill her. Having found her, he complicates matters by falling for her.
If I had any problem with this novel, it was accepting that Adam, a bright guy who knows Polly killed her first husband and deserted the second - and may have committed another murder since he met her - would want to marry her. Polly is said to be attractive and to possess an "innate wildness in bed," but his rush to matrimony nonetheless struck me as dubious. Still, given Lippman's confident storytelling, and the truth, universally acknowledged, that we men are often numskulls where women are concerned, I came to accept Adam's passion. Everybody's somebody's fool.
The novel is enhanced by delightful writing. Out in the woods one day, Adam spots a bear "lumbering past as if rushing to catch a bus." Lippman sums up Polly's pragmatism thusly: "The goal is never a man. Never. Men are the stones she jumps to, one after another, toward the goal." Her goals are the insurance money, her daughters and her freedom. Polly is no saint, but she still dreams of a decent life.
Lippman's story builds toward two questions: If Polly and Adam will live happily ever after and if either the crooked insurance man or her spurned husband will try to kill the lovers. That cannot be revealed here, but it's fair to say that the ending Lippman has devised for her experiment in noir is a total surprise and, this reader thought, a good one.
---
Anderson writes regularly about thrillers and mysteries for The Washington Post.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
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Anderson, Patrick. "Book World: Laura Lippman's 'Sunburn' is classic noir, with no shortage of sex and violence." Washington Post, 22 Feb. 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A528514421/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a6a5a8e7. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
SUNBURN By Laura Lippman 292 pp. William Morrow. $26.99.
A June evening in Belleville, Del., an unremarkable little town surrounded by cornfields and chicken farms. No one stops in Belleville. It's a place people drive through, heading somewhere else: the coast, the city. And yet here they are, two strangers who find themselves on neighboring stools at the local bar slash restaurant, the High-Ho. Both are nursing secrets. Polly Costello is on the run, not from one past but several, and Adam Bosk is hunting for something, though perhaps not the thing he thinks.
Straightaway he notices Polly's sunburn. ''Why would a redhead well into her 30s make such a rookie mistake?'' It's the first of many unspoken questions. ''Sunburn'' is full of characters who at critical moments fail to ask the obvious: people who hold back because they're reluctant to betray their position; or because showing interest might encourage someone to fall in love with them; or because they aren't smart enough to be curious; or because they dread having their fears confirmed.
But this is all in the future. For now, Adam and Polly sit on their stools with their secrets and their drinks (he orders red wine, and regrets this when it comes refrigerated; she has whiskey -- on the rocks, of course), sizing each other up. Adam ''doesn't go in hard. He's not that way. Doesn't have to be, if that doesn't sound too vain. It's just a fact: He's a Ken doll kind of guy, if Ken had a great year-round tan.'' (I'll admit I faltered here. Would any man claim comparison to a Ken doll?) Soon the pair are exchanging wisecracks and put-downs familiar from those black-and-white afternoon movies where characters speak more to conceal than to reveal, even as they fall for each other.
As neither is in a hurry to leave town, it's fortunate that the High-Ho is hiring, and soon the new waitress and the new short-order cook -- wouldn't you know it, Adam has formidable kitchen skills -- are passing order slips and plates of steak to each other, building up to something that isn't exactly ''Frankie and Johnny.''
Laura Lippman's ''Sunburn'' may be set in 1995, before Google searches made it a whole lot harder to vanish and start afresh elsewhere, but it takes its inspiration (as Polly does, explicitly), from '40s noir: ''Double Indemnity,'' ''Mildred Pierce,'' ''The Postman Always Rings Twice.'' Polly and Adam's relationship observes the conventions. It's ill advised, passionate and doomed. How could it be otherwise? The reader knows from the start that Polly has done something unforgivable: She has walked away from her husband and 3-year-old daughter at the beach, left a note in their holiday rental and hitched a ride into an unknown future, jumping out at Belleville when the driver tried to put a hand on her knee. We know her husband is a heel, we can forgive her for running away from him -- but a child? Really? And if Adam is able to overlook this, how do we feel about that?
Polly yearns for a quiet life (''All she has ever wanted is a home, a place with things that bring comfort. Thick towels, deep chairs, soft rugs. That doesn't necessarily mean having money, but it means having more money than she's ever had. So far'') but she won't find one in Belleville. All the shadows she hoped to leave behind -- police corruption, arson, insurance scams, confidence tricks and, inevitably, murder -- are catching up with her. If these elements of the plot drag a little, perhaps that's because Lippman wants us to examine our assumptions. Why are these crimes somehow less compelling, less appalling, than Polly's act of maternal desertion? Unpicking this, the reader is shown something unexpected. The last scenes may belong in a different, more sentimental novel, but by this point you will want difficult, damaged Polly to find her happy ending.
So ''Sunburn,'' though cool and twisty, has more heart than expected. It's generous in other ways, too. The particular atmosphere of unlovely Belleville is deftly conveyed: its motel and trailer park, its emptied-out Main Street and, of course, the High-Ho, where regulars gather to watch ''the inevitable Orioles game on the inevitable TV with the inevitable shimmy in its reception.'' Yet there is beauty here too. You see the huge red sun sinking into the cornfields; you feel the dew underfoot.
Now and then a tangential character who in another novel might only merit a line or two is given a vivid chapter of his or her own. Here's a recently dumped gay P.I. who's fussy about chef's salads; a video-store clerk who prides himself on his staff picks; a housewife who has a marble-topped kitchen island and white roses in a milk-bottle vase; and her sister, who has none of those things.
People move in and out of the narrative with their own baggage and preoccupations. What they choose to tell us is very subjective and not always directly relevant, and this clamor of voices gives the novel satisfying depth and texture. There's a sense here that we're brushing up against many lives, many versions of the truth. ''Stories are like dough,'' Polly thinks, reflecting on the slippery business of family myth. ''Put your hands in your stories, work them, but don't overwork them.''
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CAPTION(S):
DRAWING (DRAWING BY ANNA PARINI)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
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Lane, Harriet. "Delaware Noir." The New York Times Book Review, 11 Feb. 2018, p. 13(L). Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A527064291/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a0a17aeb. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.
Sunburn.
By Laura Lippman.
Mar. 2018.384p. Morrow, $26.99 (9780062389923).
It's no coincidence that the books of James M. Cain get a shout-out in Lippman's new novel. This story about a bad girl and the man who falls in love with her could easily be set in the 1940s or '50s (it's actually set in the mid '90s). Our lovers meet in a small Delaware town; she's a customer at a restaurant-slash-bar, and he's sitting a couple of stools over. They make small talk, lightly flirtatious banter, and they wind up sharing an attraction. But here's the thing: the bad girl, who calls herself Polly, has a past. And their meeting is no chance encounter; the man (it's tempting to call him a patsy), Adam, has followed her to this small town. Why? For whom is Adam working? What secrets is Polly keeping hidden away? Lippman answers these questions, and several more besides, but in an especially tantalizing manner, parceling out information slowly, a bit here, a bit there, letting us spend some time processing a new revelation before dropping another one on us. Ingeniously constructed and extremely suspenseful, the novel keeps us guessing right up until its final moments. Lippman is a popular and dependable writer, and this homage to classic noir showcases a writer at the height of her powers.--David Pitt
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Lippman's ltd! star continues to rise, and her latest is already attracting a lot of buzz. Expect that to grow as the pub date draws closer.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
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Source Citation
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Pitt, David. "Sunburn." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 8, 15 Dec. 2017, p. 89. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A521459587/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=95860d37. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.