The Most Dangerous Thing

Starred review from June 27, 2011
Childhood friends, long since splintered off, uneasily reunite after the death of one of their own in Edgar-winner Lippman's superbly unsettling tale of the consequences of long-buried secrets. Gordon "Go-Go" Halloran drives his car into a wall after a night of drinking, even though he's been on the road to sobriety. On the brink of divorce, Gwen Robison returns home to care for her aging father and learns of Go-Go's death from his older brother, Sean. With the eldest Halloran brother, Tim, and a scruffy, nature-loving neighborhood girl, Mickey Wickham, the five had come together in the spring of 1977. The group broke apart after a violent encounter in the woods, an event that was never spoken of again, but permeates each of their lives. Lippman (I'd Know You Anywhere) cleanly shifts between the past, following the band of kids through their adventures in the woods of their Baltimore suburb, and the present when Go-Go's death draws them back together. Her series lead, Tess Monaghan, makes a brief appearance, but this stand-alone belongs to the children, their memories, and everything dangerous that lives in the woods.

January 2, 2012
When a fatal car accident—that may or may not have been a suicide—claims the life of Gordon Halloran, an alcoholic, it rips opens forgotten emotional wounds as the friends he left behind are forced to revisit old traumas and an awful lie they all share. Narrator Linda Emond’s understated performance is a perfect fit for Lippman’s leisurely prose in this stand-alone novel that alternates between past and present and employs crime as a means of probing beneath psychological facades. Edmond’s narration conveys a wide range of emotion, ably captures the book’s many characters, and never fails to keep listeners engaged as the author gradually reveals what “the most dangerous thing” really was. A Morrow hardcover.

In the late 1970s, five suburban children form an unlikely alliance and spend countless hours in the vast forest bordering their neighborhood. On the night of a hurricane, they become tangled in the death of a mysterious vagabond friend in the woods, creating a web of secrets that still impacts their lives 30 years later. Narrator Linda Emond employs limited characterizations, missing the opportunity to enhance the rich self-explorations of the characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the lies and guilt associated with that night. Still, her crisp, well-paced narrative provides cohesion throughout the intense recollections that are prompted by the funeral of the youngest, who was killed in a car crash that could have been suicide or an accident. N.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine