Novella; eleventh in Lippman's contemporary mystery series about Tess
Monaghan, private investigator in Baltimore. Restricted to bed thanks
to difficulties with her pregnancy, Tess passes the time watching
people in the park outside, particularly a young woman in a green coat
(with a greyhound in a matching one). One day, the greyhound passes by
on its own…
This book is an interesting example of what a series entry can
be. Significant characters are introduced and described, all right,
but without the weight of the ten previous books behind them they
would have much less impact. This definitely isn't the place to start
with this series, but if you have read the others (which I did in
2010) it's a pleasing capstone to what's gone before.
Similarly, Lippman grew up and lives in Baltimore – David Simon is her
husband, and I discovered her writing while watching The Wire – but
the love for the city and the sense of place that have always come
over in the full-length books aren't as present here. This feels in
some ways like a technical exercise, an explicit homage to Rear
Window and The Daughter of Time.
The mystery plot develops along conventional lines: the woman's
husband is curiously unconcerned about her absence, and investigation
reveals that he's had two previous marriages, each of which ended with
the wife's death. Although she doesn't have a paying client, Tess
becomes suspicious, and enlists her friends and employees to do the
legwork she can't. The resolution, while consistent with what's gone
before, isn't really foreshadowed, so I can't recommend this to pure
puzzle-story fans.
Even so, the primary purpose of this book is to give us a look at a
well-liked protagonist going through life-changing events, and it does
that well. It's not the end of the series, but it would have been a
satisfying one if it had been.
To be followed by Hush in 2015.
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