Author Spotlight: Laura Lippman
If Nancy Drew were a real person alive today, she’d probably be a woman who read Laura Lippman in her spare time.
Detective fiction author Laura Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but raised in Columbia, Maryland. With a journalist father and a librarian mother, Lippman grew up surrounded by books. She attended high school in Columbia, where she participated in theater and the school academic team. After high school, she attended the Medill School of Journalism in Northwestern University.
Lippman followed her father’s path and started her career as a writer by working as a reporter for the San Antonio Light and Baltimore Sun. She worked in journalism for 20 years and eventually quit in 2001 to become a full-time author.
Baltimore Blues, Laura’s first novel, was published in 1997. Baltimore Blues is about a former newspaper reporter who finds herself unemployed when the paper she works for shuts down abruptly. To pay her rent, she starts working as a private eye. The novel started the Tess Monaghan series, which she is best known for. The series spanned 14 years, 12 novels, and three shorts.
Every Secret Thing (2003) is Lippman’s first stand-alone novel. The book tells the story of two little girls who find an infant on an unfamiliar street in Baltimore. Once the girls are 18, they are released from “kid prison,” still dealing with the original crime that they witnessed as children. To add to their worries, another child has disappeared under similar circumstances. The book was adapted into a film in 2014, starring Diane Lane.
What the Dead Know (2007), another stand-alone novel, was Lippman’s first book to make the New York Times Bestseller List. Thirty years ago in Baltimore, the Bethany sisters disappeared from a shopping mall. The girls, aged 11 and 15, were never found. No bodies were recovered, and no evidence was there to examine. Now, a woman who is a victim of a hit-and-run accident appears, claiming to be Heather, the younger of the two girls. Unfortunately, her story is not backed up by evidence, and every lead she offers only leads to dead ends. However, Heather truly believes that she knows something about that incident. The novel was short-listed for the Crime Writer’s Association Dagger Award and won the Anthony Award for Best Novel in 2008.
After I’m Gone, published in 2014, explores the disappearance of one man, Felix Brewer, and its effects on the lives of five women: his wife, his daughters, and his mistress. The wife assumes that’s his disappearance is caused by his mistress, but when the mistress is found dead, the investigation shifts. The novel won the Anthony Award for Best Novel in 2015.
Lippman is married to David Simon, a fellow former reporter at Baltimore Sun. Simon also created the popular HBO shows Treme and The Wire. Lippman has made a brief cameo on the latter show as well.
Lippman has received various awards for her work, most notably the Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe awards for mystery fiction. Her latest work, Sunburn, is coming this February.
Sources: 1.Every Secret Thing
5.Laura Lippman: "He's definitely taken from my work"
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