Hardly Knew Her

August 25, 2008
Fans of bestseller Lippman's long-running series featuring Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan (Another Thing to Fall
, etc.) will be pleased to find that the 17 selections in her first short story collection are as intricate and witty as her novels. Part one, “Girls Gone Wild,” focuses on women engaged in all manner of shady enterprises, from first-time drug buyers in “The Crack Cocaine Diet” to an unassuming femme fatale with a secret in “Dear Penthouse Forum (A First Draft).” Lest readers think Lippman can only work her magic in her Maryland hometown, she devotes a section, “Other Cities, Not My Own,” to stories in settings as disparate as New Orleans during Mardi Gras (“Pony Girl”) and Dublin, Ireland, full of jilted lovers (“Honor Bar”). The book's climax is “Scratch a Woman,” a novella written for the collection and starring Heloise, the enterprising heroine of “One True Love,” an earlier entry. George Pelecanos provides an appreciative introduction.

December 22, 2008
It’s not Linda Emond’s fault that most of Lippman’s women who kill are white, middle-class and between the aged 30–40. Almost all live in the corridor between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and eradicate men who have it coming to them. No wonder they tend to speak alike. The talented Emond strives with some success to individualize these murderers’ first-person narratives. In the short story “My Baby Walks the Streets of Baltimore,” Emond, who has previously read Lippman’s Another Thing to Fall
, performs Tess Monaghan as the crisp and efficient detective she is meant to be. While Francois Battiste is given comparatively little to do, he shines in his reading of “Pony Girl” as the too-smooth and confident man-on-the-make who is no match for two beautiful Mardi Gras celebrants. This collection is both entertaining and forgettable, but Lippman fans will not be disappointed by these talented performances. A Morrow hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 25).