Every piece of information she gives them – the possible grave of her older sister and a possible perpetrator who now has dementia – seems to lead to yet another dead end.ĭeftly moving between past and present, Lippman presents the last day both sisters, Sunny and Heather, were seen alive from a variety of perspectives. So, in 2005, when a woman is involved in a hit-and-run accident near the Bethany’s childhood home and claims to be Heather, the younger sister, is she to be believed? She certainly knows a lot about the case and a lot about Heather’s life but she seems to be hiding secrets of her own. Never found and the case never solved, their disappearance consumed the lives of their parents and the cop in charge of the case. Thirty years ago, two sisters, Sunny and Heather Bethany, aged eleven and fifteen, disappeared on Easter Saturday on a trip to a Baltimore shopping mall. What the Dead Know is a slick thriller that uses the disappearance of two sisters in 1975 to pose interesting questions about identity, legacy and victimhood. I loved Sunburn and thought it was stylish and well-written, so decided to have a look and see if her back catalogue contained any other gems. I used to blame Chandler but as Robert Parker is hailed as reviving the genre, I’m blaming him for almost every literary PI written in the 80s and 90s being an insufferable smart aleck.I have a few Laura Lippman books in the 746 but hadn’t read any before trying her most recent book, Sunburn, last year. *Reading some Spenser books makes it make sense how the modern day PI involved. While it’s true that we all bring our biased, politicized perspective to the art we consume, this one will really hit you depending who you are and how you experience it. It was one where I was certain the direction in which it would go and was completely wrong. I’ve had issues with Lippman’s obfuscation and it’s not great here but it made the ending all the more painful. She doesn’t slow the burn as much as occasionally light it.īut when it comes together, it really works in a devastating way. And some characters are given the short shrift, while others get more screen time than need be. She was still finding her footing in this work there are a lot of places that could have been edited. I’m not sure why I’ve never read it but I’m glad I did now. This is one of her early stand-alone works.

She does excellent character-based crime tales with enough local flavor to fill in blanks but not so much that you suffocate on it. I loved the Tess Monaghan series for its local color, less so for Tess.* Lippman had better books in her and as she branched out to standalone works, her talent shone. I’ve written before about my reading journey with Laura Lippman.

Laura lippman book reviews