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.

A book of short stories, especially one written by Laura Lippman, gives a narrator the opportunity to show his or her stuff. That's exactly what readers Linda Emond and Francois Battiste do. These 16 stories about Lippman's diverse female characters offer a variety of plots, suspense, plenty of action, and lots of revenge. Three are about Lippman's private investigator, Tess Monaghan. Another two concern a special prostitute that has another life in the suburbs. The narrators speak in many different voices. Linda Emond's tone is troubled, cunning, harsh, diabolical, childlike, and sad. Battiste sounds tough and frenzied. And just when you thought you'd heard it all, one of them unleashes a barrage that makes you realize they're just getting started. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine