What the Dead Know

May 28, 2007
Emond sounds more than a little like Laura Linney, and her plainspoken, occasionally whispery reading of Lippman’s disturbing novel of buried secrets often brings the acclaimed actress to mind. Lippman’s novel shuttles back and forth between the present, where a middle-aged woman is involved in a hit-and-run accident, and a past in which two girls are abducted from a mall and never seen again. Do the two events have anything to do with each other? Emond brings a sense of quiet force to Lippman’s story, her voice imprinted with sadness and a sense of life’s tragic surprises. Her reading bridges the unbridgeable gaps between past and present in Lippman’s story, offering little in the way of surprises but a marked amount of suppressed, nearly palpable emotion. Simultaneous release with the Morrow hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 22).

Starred review from January 22, 2007
Edgar-winner Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan mystery series (No Good Deeds
, etc.), shows she's as good as Peter Abrahams and other A-list thriller writers with this outstanding stand-alone. A driver who flees a car accident on a Maryland highway breathes new life into a 30-year-old mystery—the disappearance of the young Bethany sisters at a shopping mall—after she later tells the police she's one of the missing girls. As soon as the mystery woman drops that bombshell, she clams up, placing the new lead detective, Kevin Infante, in a bind, as he struggles to gain her trust while exploring the odd holes in her story. Deftly moving between past and present, Lippman presents the last day both sisters, Sunny and Heather, were seen alive from a variety of perspectives. Subtle clues point to the surprising but plausible solution of the crime and the identity of the mystery woman. Lippman, who has also won Shamus, Agatha, Anthony and Nero Wolfe awards, should gain many new fans with this superb effort. 9-city author tour.