Staying up late with "Every Secret Thing"

It's the summer of new authors for me, even though they'd be annoyed to find themselves referred to as "new." What I mean is, authors your host has never read. I've been trying to widen my scope, in an effort to move up the crime-fiction ladder from poseur to dilettante. It was in that spirit that I picked up Laura Lippman's Every Secret Thing a couple of days ago.

A hundred pages in, I'm impressed. The story is fresh: two 11-year-old girls serve seven years in juvenile detention for their roles in the death of an infant, then are released into a hostile world. The plot thickens.

Lippman has this deft way of gradually revealing more details about the central death to make this a page-turner -- it feels a little like Dennis LeHane's "Mystic River" that way. I meant to read just a couple of chapters last night but didn't stop until I'd read six. Also, it's somehow refreshing that every major character thus far is female, convincingly drawn and with distinct motivations. The single male character I've seen is one of those guys who make you ashamed of the gender.

So. Of the three books I bought at Border's the other day, this first one seems a good investment. Since this "new " writer has eight other novels in print, I've got another good author to browse on my next trip to the store or library.

For those more widely-read than I: What about Lippman's series novels? Do they hold up as well?

Comments

Peter Rozovsky said…
How about a comment from someone more narrowly read than you are, at least as far as Laura Lippman is concerned? You'll know that I found her story a highlight of the Dublin Noir anthology. Her novels might not be noir, but she did a pretty good job with that highly adaptable style in the story. Perhaps she can write convincingly in more than one style, a big mark in her favor.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
August 14, 2007 at 3:28 PM
Dave Knadler said…
That is encouraging. Also, she's one of those writers with a newspaper background. That doesn't always lead to great fiction, but in her case it surely couldn't have hurt.
August 14, 2007 at 7:41 PM
Jessie Knadler said…
That book sounds REALLY good. I want to read it after you do. I'm finally getting around to reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma," a natural history of three different types of meals.....industrial, organic, and hunter-gatherer. NOt sure if you're interested in the subject matter, but Pollan is an amazing writer and investigative journalist. The book is the most compelling one I've read in a long while.
August 16, 2007 at 11:58 AM
Dave Knadler said…
Hi Jess. I'd recommend it, unless you really don't like crime fiction. She's one of the best writers I've come across in awhile.

I'll have a look at The Omnivore's Dilemma -- just so happens I have a coupon for Border's.
August 16, 2007 at 12:51 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine
Read more

A farewell to copy

Image
On Friday I walked out of a newspaper building as an employee for the last time. During the stroll to the far end of the parking lot, I did a brief review of my career. Here's the high point: I've worked at newspapers that have won Pulitzer prizes. And the low point: None of those Pulitzers were won while I was working at the newspapers in question. Hey, I'm sure that's just bad timing. Of the half dozen papers I worked for, the best was the Philadelphia Inquirer. The worst was the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont. When you enter the cavernous newsroom of the Inquirer, you pass by a wall festooned with pictures of reporters and editors who have won Pulitzers. It is a measure of my love of journalism that when I looked at these pictures, I usually reflected not on the prize-winning stories they reported, but on the clothes they were wearing. Look at them: All these gifted journalists, photographed at the very apex of their careers, and most of them are dressed like t
Read more

Wall Street and Willa Cather

Image
I've been reading My Antonia , Willa Cather's 1918 novel about growing up on the Nebraska prairie. It's a beautiful book, poignant and uplifting, full of characters who reflect the truth of life in all its joy and pain. It's also an instructive portrait of the time in America when explicit toil was required for mere survival, never mind success. I've been reading it against the background noise of Wall Street's collapse, men and women on CNN droning gravely about the consequences of greed, and the need to ensure that the greediest of all do not, in the end, go broke. It's a complex issue. It takes someone like Yale business student David Bledin, writing an op-ed for the Washington Post, to put a human face on the unfolding tragedy. You think you have it tough; think what it's like for Masters of the Universe-in-training who now rue the rigors involved in chasing a seven-figure salary: "... once I could afford to splurge on a Zagat-rated "$$$
Read more