Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working full-time and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001.Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards.
Lippman's new novel is Lady in the Lake.
From her Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross:
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Laura Lippman, who was a reporter for many years at The Baltimore Sun, still lives in Baltimore most of the year. And now she has a new novel called "Lady In The Lake" that's a mystery crime novel. It's a stand-alone novel, separate from her award-winning Tess Monaghan detective series.Visit Laura Lippman's website.
Your novel's set in the mid-'60s, in '65 and '66, at a time when it was hard for women and African Americans to get decent jobs. But it was especially hard, of course, for African American women (laughter), facing both of those, you know, quote, "deficits" to get good jobs. And there's also gay people in it, and it's before the gay rights movement. What made you think about setting it in the mid-'60s, at a time when some people had started demanding their rights and others were soon about to?
LIPPMAN: I started with the year 1966 because, in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, I couldn't figure out how to write about the present, and that's not even a partisan opinion. It just felt that it was a time that was at once extremely frenetic and extremely static. It felt as if everyone in my life, myself included, spent their time on almost this hamster wheel of social media, the news network of their choice, social media, the news network of their choice.
And they would run around and around and around, and they'd be very excited about the breaking story of the day, the hour. This will change everything. Things are - and then nothing would happen. And I thought, this is insane. I don't know how to write about contemporary times. I've since read some novels that I think do it really well, but they don't go straight at it.
And I had long planted in my Tess novels that her parents met against the backdrop of the governor's race of 1966. And the governor's race of 1966 in Maryland seemed similar in many ways to the 2016 presidential race. There was an insider candidate that no one really found that exciting but recognized had sort of checked all the boxes and had won his place on the ballot through showing up and or ascending through the ranks.
And there was this outsider who bested more experienced politicians, got the nomination and then ran on an overtly racist platform. Difference in Maryland in 1966 is the outsider was a Democrat. And the staid, conventional Republican candidate was Spiro Agnew. And Democrats abandoned their party, especially African American Democrats - and who can blame them? - to vote for Agnew. So I started there.
Almost none of this is in the book at this point (laughter); it's just way in the background. And then I began looking at '66 in Baltimore, and it was a fascinating time. It was the year, at the end of the year in which a police commissioner named Donald Pomerleau would arrive and start talking about more truly integrating the police department because, at the beginning of 1966, African American officers can either be patrolmen or they can be in vice, and that's it. They're not even allowed to drive patrol cars and have radios. That's how...[read on]
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