The crime novelist Laura Lippman attended Northwestern, then worked as a journalist for something like twelve years. She wanted to write stories. The Tess Monaghan series began: smart detective books with an unusually rich, detailed setting, complicated "love letters" to Baltimore. The fabulous success of the Monaghan books seemed to help bring about a "life change" for Lippman; a marriage ended, and a new marriage began, and this time the spouse was David Simon, who created "The Wire."
By all accounts, David Simon has an unwieldy ego, and you would want someone as tough as Lippman to cut him down to size. I don't know about you--but, if given a choice between a pretentious "Wire" episode and a twisty, fast-moving Lippman novel, I will choose the Lippman novel every time.
Midway through the Monaghan books, Lippman seemed to grow restless: "Stand-alone novels" began to appear on the scene. Maybe this is why people call Lippman the "American Ruth Rendell": There are the reliable detective novels, in one corner, and then there are the riskier, more ambitious stand-alone novels, somewhere else. I prefer the stand-alone novels--and I think Lippman prefers them, as well. She has mused aloud about ending the Monaghan series full-stop--maybe with a two-book tie-up. Having given Monaghan a child in a recent book, Lippman says she finds it increasingly difficult to justify putting Monaghan into life-threatening situations.
"Life-threatening" is the standard M.O. in a Lippman book. As Mindy Kaling has famously said, "Laura Lippman's novels make me want to lead a sexier, more violent life."
Lippman has won all the major crime awards, and writers with "literary cred" have gone to bat for her. Tom Perrotta: "Lippman is an artist, and not a guilty pleasure." Kate Atkinson: "Wonderful pacing and crafting." Who could disagree?
I'm reading "To the Power of Three"--the last of the stand-alone Lippmans in my pile--and I have to say that the style is a bit banal after the pyrotechnics of Tessa Hadley's "Late in the Day." But who cares? Lippman can tell a story.
"To the Power of Three" concerns a school shooting. One high-school girl has murdered another, and attempted to murder a third. The killer herself is now in critical condition. We get a panoramic survey of local reactions, then we flash back to the third grade. Something happened in the third grade. Something THAT CAN EXPLAIN EVERYTHING!
As always with Lippman, I enjoy the violent, sordid plot. (Lippman sometimes borrows from real life: a famous bookie who disappeared in Baltimore, two girls who went missing from a mall. Columbine was clearly on Lippman's mind when she wrote "Power of Three," and she even includes a discussion of the disastrous SWAT team approach to the Columbine tragedy. Lippman comments, intelligently, on how the official approach to school shootings changed after Columbine, and how the new approach still leaves something to be desired. Did you know there was a SWAT team method at play in Columbine? You did--if, like this blogger, like Lippman, you have a sick mind.)
I've said before--and it remains true--Lippman offers other pleasures beyond her Grand Guignol plots. Most notably: She has an eye for weird details. Reading a Lippman novel, I continuously sense that Lippman is inserting bits from her own life, and observations from her own outings, her own P/T conferences, her own Panera visits, into her work. This makes the work dense and absorbing--not slick, in the style of James Patterson.
For example: Lippman specifies that the high school she is writing about has four detached buildings, and that this is a terrible idea, because every time the bell rings, kids have to choose between digging out their winter coats (and thus being late to a class across the quad) or running, freezing, under-dressed, across the courtyard. The portion of Maryland Lippman is writing about is in a storm-belt, a belt that doesn't have an impact on other Maryland areas. Who would pause to consider this weirdness? Lippman would.
Also, the principal has a habit of starting any remark with: "This is your principal speaking." The secretaries giggle about this. Still, those same secretaries find that bureaucratic stiffness oddly comforting when the actual school shooting is taking place.
A young man--just recently cast as Guy Pearce's younger brother in an action movie, "the lesser Russell Crowe"--overhears a story about an ex-girlfriend's sudden death. The young man is drinking at a bar near Tisch. He has to ask a stranger at the bar to "borrow some wifi," and the awkwardness of this request, and the ensuing response, becomes its own little sui generis chapter. Again: You wouldn't find this in Patterson, and I'm not sure you would find it in Lee Child. (The Tisch scene also involves a bitchy discussion of "Rent," and its K-Mart-esque falseness, and I find this spot-on and entertaining.)
Anyway, all this is to say that Lippman really is an oddball, a writer, peering out at a world that feels slightly uncomfortable to her, and making varied and colorful gardens with her own discomfort. A long, snowy weekend demands thick, immersive novels, and I'm nominating Lippman's "Power of Three"--along with Jennifer Haigh's "Baker Towers"--for your consideration. Give it a thought. Happy reading.
By all accounts, David Simon has an unwieldy ego, and you would want someone as tough as Lippman to cut him down to size. I don't know about you--but, if given a choice between a pretentious "Wire" episode and a twisty, fast-moving Lippman novel, I will choose the Lippman novel every time.
Midway through the Monaghan books, Lippman seemed to grow restless: "Stand-alone novels" began to appear on the scene. Maybe this is why people call Lippman the "American Ruth Rendell": There are the reliable detective novels, in one corner, and then there are the riskier, more ambitious stand-alone novels, somewhere else. I prefer the stand-alone novels--and I think Lippman prefers them, as well. She has mused aloud about ending the Monaghan series full-stop--maybe with a two-book tie-up. Having given Monaghan a child in a recent book, Lippman says she finds it increasingly difficult to justify putting Monaghan into life-threatening situations.
"Life-threatening" is the standard M.O. in a Lippman book. As Mindy Kaling has famously said, "Laura Lippman's novels make me want to lead a sexier, more violent life."
Lippman has won all the major crime awards, and writers with "literary cred" have gone to bat for her. Tom Perrotta: "Lippman is an artist, and not a guilty pleasure." Kate Atkinson: "Wonderful pacing and crafting." Who could disagree?
I'm reading "To the Power of Three"--the last of the stand-alone Lippmans in my pile--and I have to say that the style is a bit banal after the pyrotechnics of Tessa Hadley's "Late in the Day." But who cares? Lippman can tell a story.
"To the Power of Three" concerns a school shooting. One high-school girl has murdered another, and attempted to murder a third. The killer herself is now in critical condition. We get a panoramic survey of local reactions, then we flash back to the third grade. Something happened in the third grade. Something THAT CAN EXPLAIN EVERYTHING!
As always with Lippman, I enjoy the violent, sordid plot. (Lippman sometimes borrows from real life: a famous bookie who disappeared in Baltimore, two girls who went missing from a mall. Columbine was clearly on Lippman's mind when she wrote "Power of Three," and she even includes a discussion of the disastrous SWAT team approach to the Columbine tragedy. Lippman comments, intelligently, on how the official approach to school shootings changed after Columbine, and how the new approach still leaves something to be desired. Did you know there was a SWAT team method at play in Columbine? You did--if, like this blogger, like Lippman, you have a sick mind.)
I've said before--and it remains true--Lippman offers other pleasures beyond her Grand Guignol plots. Most notably: She has an eye for weird details. Reading a Lippman novel, I continuously sense that Lippman is inserting bits from her own life, and observations from her own outings, her own P/T conferences, her own Panera visits, into her work. This makes the work dense and absorbing--not slick, in the style of James Patterson.
For example: Lippman specifies that the high school she is writing about has four detached buildings, and that this is a terrible idea, because every time the bell rings, kids have to choose between digging out their winter coats (and thus being late to a class across the quad) or running, freezing, under-dressed, across the courtyard. The portion of Maryland Lippman is writing about is in a storm-belt, a belt that doesn't have an impact on other Maryland areas. Who would pause to consider this weirdness? Lippman would.
Also, the principal has a habit of starting any remark with: "This is your principal speaking." The secretaries giggle about this. Still, those same secretaries find that bureaucratic stiffness oddly comforting when the actual school shooting is taking place.
A young man--just recently cast as Guy Pearce's younger brother in an action movie, "the lesser Russell Crowe"--overhears a story about an ex-girlfriend's sudden death. The young man is drinking at a bar near Tisch. He has to ask a stranger at the bar to "borrow some wifi," and the awkwardness of this request, and the ensuing response, becomes its own little sui generis chapter. Again: You wouldn't find this in Patterson, and I'm not sure you would find it in Lee Child. (The Tisch scene also involves a bitchy discussion of "Rent," and its K-Mart-esque falseness, and I find this spot-on and entertaining.)
Anyway, all this is to say that Lippman really is an oddball, a writer, peering out at a world that feels slightly uncomfortable to her, and making varied and colorful gardens with her own discomfort. A long, snowy weekend demands thick, immersive novels, and I'm nominating Lippman's "Power of Three"--along with Jennifer Haigh's "Baker Towers"--for your consideration. Give it a thought. Happy reading.
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