Hardly Knew Her

Laura Lippman

Hardly Knew Her is a collection of sixteen short stories and one novella by Baltimore's premier author of crime fiction. The stories tend to be about sex and murder. It's not a good thing in Lippman's universe to leave a woman unfulfilled, it can get you killed. Two of the stories involve Tess Monaghan, star of Lippman's detective story series. One of those is written in the form of an article in the "Beacon Light," the newspaper in Lippman's fictional Baltimore. It is an interview with Monaghan and her best bud, Whitney Talbot. Tess Monaghan fans must read it if they want to keep up with her life.

One short story, and the novella, feature Lippman's take on the "D.C. Madam." Her fictional character doesn't get caught and is very conscientious about providing her employees with security, health insurance and benefits. Lippman has carefully worked out her business plan. I suspect that we will see this character in a novel before long. The short story is not my favorite reading. Authors tend to get all cute and O. Henry when they write short stories, going for the surprise ending in a predictable way, rather like my book reviews. These stories are no different. After reading a dozen or so of them the reader is no longer surprised to learn that the perky suburban housewife has killed her husband. Lippman's stories are mostly mini murder mysteries with the mystery left out. They are mostly written from the point of view of the murderer, for brevity's sake. For all that, these are very readable stories.

I wonder if the books title is intended to evoke traditional Irish song Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, from which When Johnny Comes Marching Home was derived. It is the title of one of the stories, of course and on the surface at least is derived from a rather poor one liner, "Poker? I hardly knew her." I like my reference better. It's more literary.

Butchers Hill

A Tess Monaghan Novel
Laura Lippman

I have become a Laura Lippman addict. I first heard Laura Lippman being interviewed on the Marc Steiner Show on what was then Baltimore's WJHU radio station, at John's Hopkins University. (It's called WYPR now and is no longer owned by the University) I found her to be engaging and was motivated to go read the new novel she was hawking and then every Laura Lippman book I could lay my hands on ever since.

Butchers Hill is an early Lippman novel that was published in paperback only, in 1998. It has recently been released in hard cover, reversing the usual procedure. One might expect an early attempt to be less well written, more tentative, not as good as an author's later work, especially if that early book was a paperback only potboiler. This is not the case. The character of Tess Monaghan is fully rounded already, and easily recognizable. The plot has twists and turns of great complexity, yet complete, after the fact, logic. Other characters are believable. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Baltimore is a city that I know mostly from the local TV news. I live in another world, across the Chesapeake Bay from there. But I love to see places and even people from that news appearing in print. If there is a writer who lives and sets novels in your area you may be able to enjoy the same experience. Of course, I also enjoy reading the late Tony Hillerman's New Mexico based novels for their setting, even though my exposure to New Mexico was only a two week vacation almost twenty years ago. Go figure.

You will never in a million years guess who done it, which makes this a real mystery and not just a "crime novel." In fact, it's not at all clear what the real crime that is being solved is until the denouement, but not in a bad plot kind of way.

Since starting to write fiction, with her Tess Monaghan mysteries, Laura Lippman has written novels that are not in the mystery genre. She has shown that she can develop complex characters and hold a reader's interest without having the plot device of a detective with a crime to solve. Yet, her Tess stories, even this early one, already stand up as complete novels on their own.