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 Salon interview with Erin Keane:
As a novelist, are you always in some way writing about yourself?Visit Laura Lippman's website.
Yes.
In what way?
I'm everybody in my novel. I can't not be, no matter how different they are. No matter how much distance and perspective and sometimes flat out distaste I might have, I have to conceive on some level these are all my progeny, every single character I create. But Maddie [the protagonist of Lady in the Lake], probably more than most characters I've created, is definitely an iteration of me. In some ways, Maddie allowed me to work out my own feelings about the fact that when I use real crimes for inspiration, as I often do, as I did in this book, am I not appropriating somebody's story? Am I not using somebody else? And is that right? Is it wrong? Is there a right way to do it that makes it better?
I think of [Maddie] as a heat-seeking missile, and she just burns her way through this story, her life. And for all of her desire and ambition to become a reporter, it turns out that there's this city around her that's teeming with stories that she doesn't even glimpse, even though they're right there. There are people in the same room with her, there are people who talk to her, and she doesn't even think to be curious about them because she's only thinking about...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Another Thing to Fall.
The Page 69 Test: What the Dead Know.
The Page 69 Test/Page 99 Test: Life Sentences.
The Page 69 Test: I'd Know You Anywhere.
The Page 69 Test: The Most Dangerous Thing.
The Page 69 Test: Hush Hush.
The Page 69 Test: Wilde Lake.
My Book, the Movie: Wilde Lake.
The Page 69 Test: Sunburn.
The Page 69 Test: Lady in the Lake.
--Marshal Zeringue