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A Great Book

 I haven’t consistently loved Laura Lippman’s most recent titles, but this week I flashed back ten (ten-ish) years and borrowed Lippman’s one volume of short stories, “Hardly Knew Her.”

 

This is mostly tales of women murdering men. A high-powered madam assists with the cover-up after her awful brother-in-law “falls down the stairs.” A young person in a “nude” suit – with a little pony-tail – eats a man’s heart on Mardi Gras, in New Orleans.

 

Elsewhere, a divorcee worries that she will lose her house to her ex, so she feigns lesbian love for a fellow PTA Mom—and the smitten Mom then has a convenient “car accident.”

 

In one rare story—told, unusually, from a boy’s perspective—a woman brings a cooler of sandwiches to the races. But, in fact, there’s something hidden under the sandwiches—a collection of human organs.

 

As usual, Lippman shows off her eye for detail. A madam at Starbucks thinks about how the Pike Place empire revolutionized the café world—how Starbucks-addicted Americans now know to “demand more from their coffee.” The madam then wonders if she could allude to the greatness of Starbucks with a new name for her call-girl service—“Starfucks.”

 

A woman who can’t stand her husband gets agitated when the husband complains about “travel soccer.” “Why did we need to send our kid to this? He isn’t headed for the World Cup….” The wife argues: “How does this impact you?” Even as she launches herself into the senseless argument, she realizes that, secretly, she is in full agreement with her husband.

 

And if you ever need to ruin a local Cuban restaurant (because you yourself want to open a diner)? Just slip some poison into the Cuban-entrée delivery that somehow makes its way into the stomach of the star Orioles short-stop (who then spews his guts in the middle of a crucial late-season game)……

 

I’m having fun following Lippman’s imagination. I hope she’ll publish another story collection….

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