Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: September 01, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 1160713
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Since her debut in 1997, Laura Lippman has won virtually every major prize in the mystery-writing field and earned the highest critical praise for her Tess Monaghan series, which has been called 'spectacular' (New York Times), 'terrific fun' (Washington Post), 'a delight' (Baltimore Sun), and 'the best mystery writing around' (Village Voice). Now Lippman steps outside her series to deliver her darkest, most troubling tale -- and vaults into the crime-fiction elite with a haunting story of murder, fate's accidents, and the stories we tell ourselves when we try to make sense of the unthinkable.
On a July afternoon two little girls, banished from a birthday party, take a wrong turn onto an unfamiliar Baltimore street -- and encounter an abandoned stroller with a baby inside it. Dutiful Alice Manning and unpredictable Ronnie Fuller only want to be helpful, to be good. People like children who are good, Alice thinks. But whatever the girls' real intentions, things go horribly awry and three families are destroyed.
Seven years later Alice and Ronnie are heading home again -- only separately this time, their fragile bond long shattered, their secrets still closely kept. Advised to avoid each other, they enter a world where they essentially have no past. In exchange, they are promised a fresh start, the chance to mold their own future.
That promise is broken when a child disappears, under disturbingly similar circumstances. And the adults in Alice's and Ronnie's lives -- the parents, the lawyers, the police -- realize that they must now confront the shattering truths they couldn't face seven years earlier. Or another mother will lose her child.
Homicide detective Nancy Porter was a rookie cop when she solved the original case with a bit of freakish luck -- and almost derailed her own career. Adept at finding the small things that can make or break a homicide case, now she must master the larger picture in order to understand where guilt truly lies. For no one is innocent in this world. Not even the children.
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Rated by buyers 
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Ms. Lippman is a talented writer that is capable of taking you along for a ride.
I appreciate a good plot twist as much as anyone, but when this novel ended I felt like I had been duped. (I am not the type that necessarily tries to solve the mystery as I am reading, so yes, it is possible to suck me in.)
It seems that Ms. Lippman used her talent to play on the reader's sympathies. I walked away from this book feeling like I had rooted for the wrong team.
While I won't deny the author's skills as a novelist, this was not a feel-good experience.
On a constructive note, I would suggest Lippman's "What the Dead Know". While WTDK is not entirely uplifting, it is a twisting novel that succeeds in creating some sense of resolution and reconciliation in the end.
Rated by buyers -
This one I really liked. There was good detail about the characters, and the goings on around them. I look forward to reading more books by Laura Lippman.
Rated by buyers 
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Lippman continues to amaze me with her potent literary brew of suspense, spot-on character analysis, and just good old fashioned story-telling skills. This stand alone tale of two children caught up in a horrible crime and the ripple effect of that crime through the ensuing years is on a par with some of our finest authors of psychological suspense, including Ruth Rendell, Denise Mina, and Patricia Highsmith. I have yet to delve into Lippman's series books, but if her stand alone novels are any indication of her talent, I'm sure I won't be disappointed.
Rated by buyers -
Two eleven year old girls are kicked out of a pool party. As they walk home they encounter a young child in a carriage on her front porch. They think she's being neglected and take her to an abandoned cottage in a park. They think they will care for her as though she's a doll. She quickly gets sick. They conclude that the child is unhappy and then she's suffocated. She was the daughter of a former spokesperson for the mayor who herself is the daughter of a powerful Black judge. The girls are White. The deceased childs mother takes the incident as though it was racially motivated. After serving seven year sentences the girls are released. Another small child very much resembling the original victim is abducted from a mall. Suspicions point to the two girls. It turns out that one of them gave birth while in the states custody to a child who was put up for adoption. The girl was very resentful that her daughter was taken from her. By the end it turns out that one of the girls was unexpectedly manipulating the other all the time. The reader gets a lot of background on the mother of the manipulator, the original dead childs mother, a female police detective, a ambitious female newspaper reporter, and a guilt ridden female lawyer who had originally represented one of the girls. A good quick read. By the way, the second child who was abducted was rescued.
Rated by buyers -
I loved "What the Dead Know," my very first Laura Lippman novel, so I eagerly anticipated reading her again. This one did not pack the wallop of the other book. It was a good read, but fell apart with the predictable resolution. I will give this author another chance, however.
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