What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of What the Dead Know
Book Review: do yourself a favor - read the book
Summary: 5 Stars
WHAT A STORY!!! The author keeps the then and now thing going right to the end - and it works. This is my first Lippman - but it will not be my last. I kinda had guessed some of the end - but this is one of the best books I have listened to in a long long time. Well written and well read. I commute so I listen to a lot of books and this was a good one.Book Review: first half=4 stars, second half=2 stars.
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the first Laura Lippman novel that I've read. I don't think I would've ever picked this book up if I hadn't read a positive review from someone I trust.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The first few chapters get your head spinning. It's an uncomfortable feeling not knowing what's coming next and actually caring. This feeling began to cool towards the second half of the book. Like most authors of this genre Lippman lost a little bit of steam when it came to actually tying up the loose ends on all the plot lines she had entertained me with in the first half. The characters were great. The only one that I had trouble with was the lead detective, Kevin Infante. I didn't like him b/c he was a cookie cutter version of every detective in a novel like this. He's from out of town, plays by his own rules, and SUPRISE! he's a ladies man. (snore) Thankfully he wasn't asked to carry much of the story on his own.
There's one large twist at the end that you'll probably see from early on in the book, but that's only a fraction of "what the dead know".
If you like this one, try Harlan Coben's "Gone for Good".
Book Review: made for TV movie in a book
Summary: 2 Stars
For fans of such detective television shows as "Cold Case" and "Without a trace" Laura Lippman's "What the Dead Know" will satisfy the beach reader set. Anyone who wants a deeply inspiring mystery should bypass this entirely. Like a good wine I was looking forward to reading this author and anticipated a twisting turning plot with a satisfying ending. What I got however was a "two buck chuck". I cared little for the characters who seemed so self-involved I wondered if they even knew they were part of the plot line. The main character has no name and no existence and we travel her path with some curiosity and empathy. I liked her, but it didn't help that the rest of this forgetful cast seemed in the way of her journey. Ms Lippman dumbs the reader down with lots of course language and sexual overtones. It make sence that Det. Infante would see the world as jaded and obsene, but everyone? I found myself skimming over their continuous chattering trying to find the string to the end of the mystery. I wanted this to be good. I just didn't need to wade through the trash to find the jewel. Which I knew was there, I just couldn't see it. Next time I'll just watch "Cold Case" and fast forward through the commercials. Try "The Thirteenth Tale" if you want a good deep mystery about sisters. It is more than a great Merlot, its sublime. Will I try Laura Lippman again? Someones going to have to convince me.Book Review: superbly imagined
Summary: 4 Stars
We've all been haunted for a day or a week by some terrible story without an ending. I remember being riveted by the still-unsolved disappearance of those two young girls from a Baltimore mall in the 70s myself. Like most, I only guessed hesitantly at a nasty, brutish, short scenario for those children, a burial in swampland. As good at constructing a plot as she is at getting into people's heads, Lippman vividly imagines a twisty, but believable way to unravel the mystery that takes twenty years and more to play out. Only a writer as talented and connected to the scene as Lippman could imagine her way under the skins of so many people, over so much time. She is able to imagine what kind of person could emerge from the long crucible of abduction and abuse and loss of identity, and what kind of fates could befall the bereft parents, who have strongly different approaches to living with their losses. She's right, of course, that decades after such an incident, those harmed and involved will still be haunted. She's extraordinarily adept and luminous when she imagines the details of the haunting. For me this brilliance is best exemplified in a scene when the mother years later steps from the slummy, grey street-face of a Mexican hotel into its vividly gardenlike courtyard, where peacocks strut. She thinks of Dorothy's departure from colorless Kansas into technicolor Oz, and finds herself in tears remembering her children's ritual viewing of the movie each year. The classic American-ness of this image, the echo of the girls' disappearance from one world into another, the questions as to which world is heaven, which hell, explode out of this beautifully imagined moment. At the heart of Lippman's unusual and always-interesting writing are two deep wells of inspiration and obsession. Baltimore is Lippman's scene and inspiration. The city and its suburbs are her apt metaphor for America and our society--failed aspirations, faking it, cheesy possessions, wannabe imitations of the few 'aristocrats' who live unnatainably around the edges, anxious consumerism, mall architecture and interior decor all seem to defeat the capacity of her characters to be fully real to themselves and others. Her obsession is with the vulnerability of girls and very young women to their poorly formed ideas of self--which seem inevitably to lead them into disastrous circumstances. It's a miracle that some actually survive, and unsurprising that the survivors are damaged and damaging people. The unknowable survivor at the heart of this story remains opaque to the last, even when we know 'what really happened.' I don't think it is an accident that the girls' mother, Miriam, who displays quite a bit of self awareness and common sense, is a born Canadian. It's easier to enjoy Lippman's Tess Monaghan mysteries, which are lightened by more smart aleck humor and the heroine's ability to be a little outside the claustrophobic situations. But this novel, like her earlier novel, Every Secret Thing, explores and bravely imagines the mystery of human darkness at its heart so well that I'm constrained to say it's a better novel. Ordinary, naive girls do get caught up in extraordinary evil--and some of it is actually what they find within.