In her 25th novel, Lippman messes up a near-perfect batting average.
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.Pub Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-239007-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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