From her Q & A with Connie Ogle at the Miami Herald:Q: Why does the crime genre work so well for you as a writer?Learn more about the book and author at Laura Lippman's website and blog.
A: This goes back more than a decade ago, when I was watching friends get serious about their work. Dennis Lehane was publishing Mystic River. George Pelecanos was working on the series that started with Right as Rain. Even Michael Connelly was digging a little deeper, pushing a little further into ‘What can I do with my series character?’ I noticed that they were writing not just about crime but about what it means to be a man in contemporary culture. What role does violence play, and does masculinity always have something to do with that? I thought, ‘Well, I can’t write that book.’ But I do have a lot of ideas about what it means to be a woman in our culture, especially a teenage girl or how inevitable it is that women’s lives are so linked to the men they’re with. They’re still defined by their husbands, even famous women. I’ve got something to say about that. And the world of teenage girls seemed very noirish to me, shot through with danger and risk. That’s where I started.
Q: There are five distinct women’s voices in the book. Was one more difficult for you to pin down than the others?
A: You forget......[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue