I'd Know You Anywhere

Starred review from August 2, 2010
Near the start of this outstanding novel of psychological suspense from Edgar-winner Lippman (Life Sentences), Eliza Benedict, a 38-year-old married mother of two living in suburban Maryland, receives a letter from Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped her the summer she was 15 and is now on death row. The narrative shifts between the present and that long ago summer, when Eliza involuntarily became a part of Walter's endless road trip, including the fateful night when he picked up another teenage girl, Holly Tackett. Soon after Walter killed Holly, Eliza was rescued and taken home. Eliza must now balance a need for closure with a desire to protect herself emotionally. Walter wants something specific from her, but she has no idea what, and she's not sure that she wants to know. All the relationships, from the sometimes contentious one between Eliza and her sister, Vonnie, to the significantly stranger one between Walter and Barbara LaFortuny, an advocate for prisoners, provide depth and breadth to this absorbing story.

August 1, 2010

Eliza Benedict believed she'd put her adolescence behind her, especially the time she'd spent as a captive of Walter Bowman, until he contacts her from death row. Struggling in her relationship with her own teenage daughter and wrestling with memories of Holly Tackett, the girl who didn't get away from Walter, Eliza finds herself repeatedly coming back to the events of the last night of Holly's life. While she may no longer be his captive, Eliza is clearly anything but free. The mystery in Lippman's latest stand-alone, while still a strong element, takes a backseat to Eliza's story, set against the impending execution of Walter. The fast-paced narrative, with dynamic supporting characters and subplots that feel underused, races to a satisfying if somewhat abrupt conclusion. VERDICT Echoing Lippman's previous stand-alones, What the Dead Know and Life Sentences, this is a solid choice for mystery fans who enjoy a broader view of crime and its aftermath. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/10.]--Amy Brozio-Andrews, Albany P.L., NY

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2010

A suburban wife and mother confronts her past when she receives a letter from the man who kidnapped her as a teenager.

Eliza Benedict thought the toughest part of moving back from London, where her husband Peter had been the Wall Street Journal's bureau chief, would be settling her kids—sweet, vulnerable eight-year-old Albie and tough, moody Iso (short for Isobel)—in the D.C. suburbs. But her daughter's teenage rebellion, however sharp, pales in comparison to the letter she receives from spree killer Walter Bowman, who held Elizabeth Lerner captive when she was 15 for almost six weeks, driving with her through Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. It was in that last state, surveyors finally decided, that he'd killed Holly Tackett, 13, making him eligible for Virginia's death penalty. Now ex-teacher Barbara Lafortuny, whose settlement from the school district after a student slashed her face frees her to spend her days practicing yoga and opposing capital punishment, tracks down the adult Elizabeth, even after her parents shortened her first name and her husband gave her his last. The inmate and the advocate hatch a plan that might spare Walter, if they can get Elizabeth-now-Eliza to cooperate. And Eliza, the one victim Walter didn't kill, seems strangely willing to risk the secure present she's built out of a horrifying past in order to do just that.

Ex-journalist Lippman (Life Sentence, 2009, etc.) never forgets as she moves from past to present and from perspective to perspective that nothing is more important—or more elusive—than the truth.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from May 1, 2010
Award-winning Lippman continues to send depth charges into the sea of crime fiction, taking measure of psychic pain in the wake of violence, and the mysteries of memory. After living in England, Eliza has returned to the Washington, D.C., area where she grew up with her successful husband and their sneaky 13-year-old daughter and sweet young son. Some might consider full-time housewife Eliza a throwback and oddly passive, yet as Lippman slowly reveals, she is actually a woman of considerable, if covert, wisdom and strength. Elizas story unfolds in two time frames. One exposes the profound complexity of her horrifying ordeal in 1985 when, at age 15, she was kidnapped and held hostage by Walter, a brooding, diabolically enthralling mechanic on a bloody spree, raping and murdering young women. The other tracks Elizas response when Walter, on Death Row just weeks away from his execution, manages to once again exert his sinister, manipulative powers. Stoked by stinging dialogue and arresting evocations of the fog of fear, doubt, and guilt versus the laser-lock pursuit of survival, Lippmans taut, mesmerizing, and exceptionally smart drama of predator and prey is at once unusually sensitive and utterly compelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)