Hardly Knew Her

August 25, 2008
Fans of bestseller Lippman's long-running series featuring Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan (Another Thing to Fall
, etc.) will be pleased to find that the 17 selections in her first short story collection are as intricate and witty as her novels. Part one, “Girls Gone Wild,” focuses on women engaged in all manner of shady enterprises, from first-time drug buyers in “The Crack Cocaine Diet” to an unassuming femme fatale with a secret in “Dear Penthouse Forum (A First Draft).” Lest readers think Lippman can only work her magic in her Maryland hometown, she devotes a section, “Other Cities, Not My Own,” to stories in settings as disparate as New Orleans during Mardi Gras (“Pony Girl”) and Dublin, Ireland, full of jilted lovers (“Honor Bar”). The book's climax is “Scratch a Woman,” a novella written for the collection and starring Heloise, the enterprising heroine of “One True Love,” an earlier entry. George Pelecanos provides an appreciative introduction.

September 1, 2008
Lippman's fans may be diappointed to discover that her latest book is a collection story. They shouldn't be. Having won awards and increasing popularity for both her Tess Monoghan series and her darker stand-alone novels ("What the Dead Know"), Lippman shows herself to be a master of short fiction, too. She also clearly agrees with Kipling that the female of the species is deadlier than the male. Women's victims here include a female friend, boyfriends (both current and ex), a husband, and one-night stands and strangers; their murders are all the more chilling. The novella "Scratch A Woman," featuring a single suburban Maryland soccer mom who works as a prostitute, and one of several stories featuring Tess are the only entries not published previously. But those that have been published are scattered in a variety of anthologies over the last seven years, including "Baltimore Noir". Here are nearly all of the short stories Lippman has ever written in one volume; read them fast, like a glutton, or slowly to savor each one. Either way, this is a treasure. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/15/08; library marketing.]Michele Leber, Arlington, VA

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