Guest blog: Robert Starner on Laura Lippman
...And in this corner ...wearing gray jeans and blue denim shirt, from our Penn Quarter/Lansburgh store, where he is assistant book manager, voracious reader and tremendous fan of many authors, Ladies and Gentlemen, Robert Starner...!
---Crowd Cheers---
Laura Lippman Returns to Olsson's Lansburgh/Penn Quarter
With the publication of her third stand-alone novel away from the critically acclaimed Tess Monahan series, Laura Lippman once again takes readers into the world of her Baltimore from the past and the present with a tremendously satisfying, un-put-down-able read with a resolution that holds the suspense right to the very end. The disappearance of two sisters nearly 32 years ago from a crowded shopping mall has remained a cold case until a car accident on the Beltway, as a woman involved in the accident blurts out that she is one of the Bethany girls. With an array of intriguing and complex characters, including lead detective Kevin Infante, a Long Islander, who has now become a long time Baltimorean, social worker Kay Sullivan, and attorney Gloria Bustamante, Lippman interweaves the present with the past lives of the Bethany family as it slowly unravels after this sad tragedy. Miriam Bethany is one of the most interesting characters I've read in quite some time. Lippman is at the top of her game, demonstrating her remarkable storytelling skills and ability to create complex characterizations in What the Dead Know.
I hope you'll join us for our event with Laura Lippman on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. at our Lansburgh/Penn Quarter location, located at 418 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC. She has become one of favorite authors to see in person, and I'm so glad she's returning to Olsson's for this new book.
I've also become a great fan of Laura Lippman's short stories that have been appearing in several anthologies over the past year or so, including a few the very popular and entertaining series of Noir mystery anthologies from Akashic Books. "A.R.M. and the Woman" in D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos, brings us one of the most desperate housewives ever as divorcee Sally Holt devises a plan to help keep her upper-Northwest home over the heads of herself and her two children, enlisting the aid of an unsuspecting accomplice. Lippman presents a wry, subtle sense of humor with a twist of the devious and diabolical. I couldn't help but laugh a little as this plot slyly unfolded.
In Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger vs. The Ugly American, edited by Ken Bruen, Laura Lippman is one of the contributors who bring an American's perspective to how Dublin appears to outsiders. In Lippman's story, "The Honor Bar," Bliss Dewitt, after being unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend Barry while drinking at a Dublin pub, liberates his American Express card as a sort of severance package, books herself into a high end hotel room and unwinds a little - okay, a lot (and quite the sexy little romp, it is too) - with her latest beau, the charming Dubliner Rory Malone. But what goes around comes around - has Bliss's bliss backfired?
In her introduction to Baltimore Noir, which she edited, Laura Lippman paints great images of Charm City and lists the numerous authors who have resided in Baltimore at one time or another, including Edgar Allen Poe, H.L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Taylor Branch, Stephen Dixon, and Sujata Massey. Her love for Baltimore exudes from this brief introduction, as well as from her story in this collection, "Easy as A-B-C" in which a contractor finds himself reconstructing and restoring his own grandmother's house for one of the newly rich in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Locust Point. The contractor exacts an intriguing revenge on the house's new owner, the unsuspecting slightly snobbish Diedre. This story lives with a vibrant nostalgia for the way things used to be in an earlier Baltimore.
One other great story I stumbled across is Laura's contribution to Vintage's Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology edited by Maggie Estep and Jason Starr, entitled "Black-Eyed Susan". Lippman's sets her story on Preakness Day at the Pimlico Raceway, in Laurel, Maryland, one of the outer suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, DC. (Opening Day at Pimlico, by the way is April 19.) Dontay Melville and his extended family earn as much money as possible, at premium prices, from the sports fans herding to the racetrack on the big day, from providing six prime parking spaces on the front lawn to hauling coolers and what-not by grocery carts to the racetrack for the visitors. It's not until the next day, Clean Up Day at the track, that Dontay learns what, Susan, one of his customers hauled into the track in three coolers.
Each of these anthologies is filled with stories or essays by many tremendously gifted writers, but in each case Laura Lippman's story is a stand out, knock out gift to read.
Laura Lippman will appear at Olsson's Books & Records - The Lansburgh/Penn Quarter, 418 7th St., NW, (202) 638-7610 on Tuesday, April 10, 2007, at 7:00 p.m. for her new book, What the Dead Know.
---Crowd Cheers---
Laura Lippman Returns to Olsson's Lansburgh/Penn Quarter
With the publication of her third stand-alone novel away from the critically acclaimed Tess Monahan series, Laura Lippman once again takes readers into the world of her Baltimore from the past and the present with a tremendously satisfying, un-put-down-able read with a resolution that holds the suspense right to the very end. The disappearance of two sisters nearly 32 years ago from a crowded shopping mall has remained a cold case until a car accident on the Beltway, as a woman involved in the accident blurts out that she is one of the Bethany girls. With an array of intriguing and complex characters, including lead detective Kevin Infante, a Long Islander, who has now become a long time Baltimorean, social worker Kay Sullivan, and attorney Gloria Bustamante, Lippman interweaves the present with the past lives of the Bethany family as it slowly unravels after this sad tragedy. Miriam Bethany is one of the most interesting characters I've read in quite some time. Lippman is at the top of her game, demonstrating her remarkable storytelling skills and ability to create complex characterizations in What the Dead Know. I hope you'll join us for our event with Laura Lippman on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. at our Lansburgh/Penn Quarter location, located at 418 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC. She has become one of favorite authors to see in person, and I'm so glad she's returning to Olsson's for this new book.
I've also become a great fan of Laura Lippman's short stories that have been appearing in several anthologies over the past year or so, including a few the very popular and entertaining series of Noir mystery anthologies from Akashic Books. "A.R.M. and the Woman" in D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos, brings us one of the most desperate housewives ever as divorcee Sally Holt devises a plan to help keep her upper-Northwest home over the heads of herself and her two children, enlisting the aid of an unsuspecting accomplice. Lippman presents a wry, subtle sense of humor with a twist of the devious and diabolical. I couldn't help but laugh a little as this plot slyly unfolded.
In Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger vs. The Ugly American, edited by Ken Bruen, Laura Lippman is one of the contributors who bring an American's perspective to how Dublin appears to outsiders. In Lippman's story, "The Honor Bar," Bliss Dewitt, after being unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend Barry while drinking at a Dublin pub, liberates his American Express card as a sort of severance package, books herself into a high end hotel room and unwinds a little - okay, a lot (and quite the sexy little romp, it is too) - with her latest beau, the charming Dubliner Rory Malone. But what goes around comes around - has Bliss's bliss backfired?
In her introduction to Baltimore Noir, which she edited, Laura Lippman paints great images of Charm City and lists the numerous authors who have resided in Baltimore at one time or another, including Edgar Allen Poe, H.L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Taylor Branch, Stephen Dixon, and Sujata Massey. Her love for Baltimore exudes from this brief introduction, as well as from her story in this collection, "Easy as A-B-C" in which a contractor finds himself reconstructing and restoring his own grandmother's house for one of the newly rich in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Locust Point. The contractor exacts an intriguing revenge on the house's new owner, the unsuspecting slightly snobbish Diedre. This story lives with a vibrant nostalgia for the way things used to be in an earlier Baltimore.
One other great story I stumbled across is Laura's contribution to Vintage's Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology edited by Maggie Estep and Jason Starr, entitled "Black-Eyed Susan". Lippman's sets her story on Preakness Day at the Pimlico Raceway, in Laurel, Maryland, one of the outer suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, DC. (Opening Day at Pimlico, by the way is April 19.) Dontay Melville and his extended family earn as much money as possible, at premium prices, from the sports fans herding to the racetrack on the big day, from providing six prime parking spaces on the front lawn to hauling coolers and what-not by grocery carts to the racetrack for the visitors. It's not until the next day, Clean Up Day at the track, that Dontay learns what, Susan, one of his customers hauled into the track in three coolers.
Each of these anthologies is filled with stories or essays by many tremendously gifted writers, but in each case Laura Lippman's story is a stand out, knock out gift to read.
Laura Lippman will appear at Olsson's Books & Records - The Lansburgh/Penn Quarter, 418 7th St., NW, (202) 638-7610 on Tuesday, April 10, 2007, at 7:00 p.m. for her new book, What the Dead Know.
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