Laura Lippman (1) (1959–)

Laura Lippman doesn't disappoint. This is, I think, the fourth novel of hers that I've read, and I've enjoyed all of them. Lippman's books are invariably set in her beloved home town of Baltimore, and that the city is full of crime and vice seems to be an integral part of the Baltimore she has lived in and adored her entire life.

When I was much, much younger, a young teen, my family's summer excursion to Myrtle Beach took us through Washington, DC, to the National Cemetery in Annapolis, and through Baltimore, where we got stuck in a late-afternoon traffic jam on the wrong side of town. There were women dressed oddly, skirts so short they barely existed, fishnet stockings and long boots despite the July heat, plunging shirts and too much lipstick. My father, when I asked, told me that they were prostitutes, and when I asked for a definiton of prostitute, he hedged and told me that they were women who sold their bodies. Unfortunately I thought that this meant they had bits of their bodies cut off - a finger here, a toe there, maybe an ear - and was terrified by this idea for years.

So in some way I've always felt kinship with the seedier sides of Baltimore, where Lippman's murders take place, where women are raped, where strippers peel off clothing and where prostitutes roam. It doesn't seem like a good place to be a woman, and that's the Baltimore that appears in Lippman's books.

Lady in the Lake is set in the mid-1960s, and is the tale of Madeline Schwartz, a well-off Jewish women dissatisfied with her life and her marriage. At the age of thirty-seven she leaves the suburbs and moves into the inner city, where she finds a murdered girl, and then a murdered woman. She joins a newspaper which is reluctant to hire her, lives in a neighbourhood where white women are a minority, and starts sleeping with a black police constable. Maddie always goes too far, and can't be stopped by reason or by the risk of danger, so her continued insistence on writing about a murdered black woman gets her noticed by the wrong people, gets her in trouble at the newspaper, and does, actually, put her life in peril. It's a good book, and it's insightful. It saddens me that so little has changed in racial relations in the United States. What happens in this 1960s scenario is still playing out across the nation.

Negatives about the book? I found it hard to get into, but that's me, anxious lately, and finding it difficult to settle into a story. I would like it if the Yiddish words that were used in the book were translated by means of a footnote or a glossary. Otherwise I am more than satisfied. I enjoyed the many narrators of the book, and I liked the twists and turns that lead to a wholly unexpected ending. Most importantly I liked Maddie. She has goals, she wants more than to take care of a man, she is driven, she is the woman of the future.… (mais)

I liked this book; however, the ending was a bit confusing. When Amber goes to prom with her tutee in 1997, she gets sick and has to go to their hotel room. She delivered a baby that she didn't even realize she was pregnant with. When the baby is found dead, she gets labeled Prom Mom, and goes to prison over it. Joe, her prom date, was labeled as Cad Dad because he failed to check on her.

Move forward 23 years, and Amber travels back home after her stepfather passes away. After putting her old house with her stepfather up for sale, she realizes that she doesn't want to leave. She opens a gallery, and begins a life she loves, until she runs into Joe. Joe brings with him drama, narcissism, and a history she doesn't want to remember. It took a while for Amber to find that out. When she does, the real action begins.

Once I figured out the ending, it is one that you will not want to miss. I only gave it four stars because of the issue with the ending, otherwise, it was a great read.… (mais)

Wondering if I can write a review that balances the amount of enjoyment I derived from the book against the things that I found frustrating about it?

Briefly, the plot revolves around a 38yr old, privileged (beautiful, comfortably wealthy, well married) Jewish housewife (Maddie Schwartz) living in Baltimore in the 1960s who, in the course of realizing she wants more out of her life than throwing dinner parties, ends up pursuing journalism and becoming involved in the investigation of two murders.

Lippman's gimmick is short, brisk chapters that alternate between 3rd person limited (telling what Maddie is up to) and chapters told in 1st person by the various people she interacts with. These 1st person chapters are creative and diverting; what's more, many of them also end up communicating clues and other critical information. The fun is never knowing when something important is going to drop, and being cunning enough to recognize it when it does! Lippman knows how to keep things interesting, and how to keep readers reading.

If only the story lived up to the storytelling! And for the first 75% of the book, I thought it would. But as the novel progresses, Lippman's plotting starts getting sloppier and sloppier: motives become increasingly tenuous, suspects start confessing for no reason other than (seemingly) to further the plot, actions trigger increasingly improbable consequences, and Maddie starts manifesting superhuman abilities (an ability to leap to deductions that would dazzle even Holmes; a sudden, inexplicable capacity for literary genius) despite demonstrating no previous signs of brilliance. Indeed, I found Maddie's whole "character arc" becoming more and more annoying as the story progressed, her early demonstrations of self-awareness and self-actualization (engaging) becoming increasingly narcissistic and condescending (offputting).

What probably irked me the most, though, was the idea of setting a novel in Baltimore in the 1960s, stuffing it with authentic details about the city (lots of interesting references to specific stores, restaurants, neighborhoods, and city institutions) ... but then neglecting to address in any realistic way the simmering racial issues that were festering in the city at that time. While Lippman faithfully represents the structures of racism that existed at that time - institutionalized discrimination, laws preventing miscegenation - her characters, particularly Maddie, behave in ways that seem weirdly oblivious to the social, emotional, or cultural manifestations of those structures. Don't get me wrong - every novel that mentions race doesn't have to be about racism. But the history of Baltimore, especially in the 1960s, is inescapably entangled with social injustice; to ignore that hits as anachronistic. (Speaking of anachronism, what's the deal with the cover art? Would someone who hadn't read the book guess that the face in the background is supposed to be a stunningly beautiful black woman of the 1960s?)

I suppose you might say that reading this is a bit like eating your favorite junk snack food - delicious, as long as you don't make the mistake of thinking too hard about the ingredients or how many empty calories you are consuming.… (mais)