Having achieved a full sweep of most of the crime genre's major awards, Lippman has recently also entered the US bestseller list on a regular basis, but has undeservedly not reached the same level of success in the UK. Her Tess Monaghan series, featuring a feisty if contrary Baltimore journalist, is a long-standing delight, but her stand-alone thrillers are getting better and better and Wilde Lake, a complex tale of family ties, crimes past and present is a delicate puzzle with deep emotional impact and insights. Youngest scion of a family that has always dominated the city, Lu Brant has just been elected the first female state attorney of the county and prepares to prosecute a mentally ill drifter accused of having beaten a woman to death in her own home. It looks like a straight forward case, but it also dredges up the painful memory of echoes of a case decades past when her own brother was accused of a crime. Soon the connections rise to the surface, and the delicate balance between professional and private begins to waver. Evocative, moving and unstitching slowly like a spider's web, a rewarding achievement with a strong quota of humanity and emotion.
Intriguing premise, stunning reveal, irresistible read. (Val McDermid). Wilde Lake is a standout novel: an intelligent, emotional, satisfying mystery that explores huge themes in small-town microcosm, in the manner of To Kill A Mockingbird, the inspiration on which it reflects. (Alex Marwood Luisa). 'Lu' Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her revered father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. As Lu prepares for the trial, the case dredges up painful memories, reminding her small but tight-knit family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man's life. Only eighteen, AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Now, Lu wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld from her when she was a child? The more she learns about the case, the more questions arise. Propelled into the past, she discovers that the legal system, the bedrock of her entire life, does not have all the answers and that the truth might be a dangerous thing to learn.
Laura Lippman has been awarded every major prize in crime fiction. Since the publication of What the Dead Know, each of her hardcovers has hit the New York Times bestseller list. A recent recipient of the first-ever Mayor's Prize, she lives in Baltimore, New Orleans and New York City with her family.
Tess, like her creator Laura Lippman, started off as a journalist in Baltimore, before their career paths diverged and she became a private eye. A modern heroine, with guts and a strong sense of social compassion, she has appeared in 12 novels to date; ANOTHER THINGS TO FALL sees Tess detecting on the set of a TV series, a milieu Lippman knows well as her husband David Simon is the man behind THE WIRE.
