Sunburn

Starred review from November 13, 2017
Set in Delaware in 1995, this scorching tale of the gray area between betrayal, lust, and murder from Edgar-winner Lippman (Wilde Lake) will resonate with fans of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. When Polly Costello walks out on her husband and young daughter during their beach vacation, she gets as far as Belleville, a town with a main drag and not much else, except the High-Ho diner, where she lands a job waitressing, at least for now. Enter Adam Bosk, who knows more than he’s telling—of course, so does Polly—but who can cook a mean burger. Soon Polly and Adam, who is exactly the kind of inquisitive guy a woman with secrets should avoid, are dancing around a relationship when Polly’s checkered past—another husband, insurance money, and now a suspicious death in Belleville—comes crawling back. Lippman ratchets up the suspense the way the mercury in a thermometer creeps up on a hot August day, until everything—Polly’s carefully laid plans of revenge and redemption, Adam’s part in her potential downfall—comes to a boiling point. This is Lippman at her observant, fiercest best, a force to be reckoned with in crime fiction. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary.

Polly, who's running from a shady past, meets Adam, who's just passing through. Secrets layered in deeper secrets unfold slowly and surprisingly in Laura Lippman's latest psychological chiller. Narrator Susan Bennett takes Lippman's irresistible setup and puts us in a flickering black-and-white world in which morality is iffy and sometimes being bad isn't so bad. Bennett makes the wary attraction between the two a kind of dance around the truth. As Adam reveals his reasons for being in town and Polly's plans unfold, Bennett gives even supporting characters dimension, from Polly's mother-in-law to her ex- to her rival for Adam. With Lippman's strong, spare prose and suspenseful plot--including film noir references sprinkled throughout--and Bennett's solid delivery, this is noir listening at its finest. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

September 1, 2017

Taking her inspiration from noir master James M. Cain, top-drawer thriller writer Lippman departs not simply from her beloved Tess Monaghan series but from the style and setting of her previous work. At a small tavern in Belleville, DE, Adam and flame-haired Polly pause in their travels and ignite an affair so tempestuous and so grounded in secrets that when a suspicious death occurs, it's hard to figure out how they might be implicated. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 1, 2017

After reworking Harper Lee's universe in Wilde Lake, the author gives the star-crossed souls of James M. Cain's fiction the Lippman treatment. Hence, desperate lovers Polly and Adam meet in a sleepy Delaware not-quite-beach town and harbor secrets there and in Baltimore. They circle each other warily, but it's fated they'll end up together. Their affair is threatened by the things they conceal from each other and by enemies lurking all around. Lippman's complicated femme fatale heroine and conflicted hero are more layered than one would expect from noir protagonists, and her nuanced characterizations extend beyond the couple at the center of the story. With an economy of words, she creates three-dimensional characters such as Irving, the man who hires Adam to spy on Polly, Cath, the weak link in a love triangle, and Polly's mother-in-law Savannah, who's not quite sure she's grandma material. Lippman's minute observations about modern life, human foibles, and the many faces of love are lagniappes to this tasty feast of a novel. VERDICT Just try to read this fantastic stand-alone from the creator of the "Tess Monaghan" series slowly. Modern noir at its best, it will delight old-movie lovers, satisfy suspense readers, and reward Lippman's legion of fans. [See Prepub Alert, 8/14/17.]--Liz French, Library Journal

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2017
A redheaded waitress, a good-looking private eye, insurance fraud, arson, rough sex, and a long hot summer: some like it noir.With her 23rd novel, Lippman (Wilde Lake, 2016, etc.) pays tribute to a literary predecessor who, like her, began his study of crime as a journalist at the Baltimore Sun--James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. Lippman's version of the sexy stranger passing through town starts with Polly Costello (that's one of her names, anyway) on a beach vacation in Fenwick, Delaware, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter, Jani. One morning she says she needs a break from the sun, then grabs her duffel and heads down the road. "What kind of woman walks out on her family? Gregg knows. The kind of woman he picked up in a bar four years ago precisely because she had that kind of wildcat energy....She scratched, she bit, she was up for anything, anywhere, anytime." Actually, poor Gregg, suddenly a single dad, doesn't know the half of it. Someone who does have a much fuller picture of Polly's background is Adam, a good-looking, Oberlin- and culinary-institute-educated fellow she runs into at a bar her first day on the lam. Neither Adam nor Polly is candid about what has brought them to stools at the High-Ho, but both stick around and get jobs there, as chef and waitress. By the time their connection in the bedroom blossoms into something more serious, the skeletons in the closet have been joined by fresh new ones. Lippman's trademark is populating a whodunit with characters so believably complicated that they don't need the mystery to carry the book. If that's not quite the case here, you can tell how much fun the author had updating the classic noir tropes, and it's contagious. Plotty, page-turning pleasure plus instructions on how to make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich and how to stab a man in the heart.

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