Book Review

By Derryll White

Lippman, Laura (1997).  Baltimore Blues.

The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average than the citizens of Baltimore.           -P.J. O’Rourke

‘Baltimore Blues’ is the author’s first novel in her successful ongoing Tess Monaghan series.  Having recently read some delightful short stories featuring Monaghan, it seemed reasonable to return to the beginning and discover why the character still endures twenty-five years later.

The old saw “when one door closes another opens” definitely applies to Tess Monaghan.  She is a victim ahead of her time, unemployed because the Baltimore Star folded and left her an out-of-work reporter.  That is a common-place occurrence today. The offer of a casual sleuthing job at $30/hour could not be denied.  This is the story of a young, willful woman who insists on meeting the world on her own terms, no one else’s.

The reader gets to know characters who grow and still populate the Monaghan series.  What is more, Lippman’s ongoing love affair with Baltimore is launched and the city becomes an integral part of the story.  This is not high drama but it is an interesting and revealing journey.

For anyone interested in writing the author capably demonstrates how a character is created, how the setting is built to nourish the character and how essential ingredients such as politics, economics and religion are incorporated to build the reader’s attention.

‘Baltimore Blues’ is not high art but it is an interesting and quick read.  Further exploration in the 13 novels in the series is required to determine just why Tess Monaghan has stood the test of time.

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Excerpts from the novel:

BALTIMORE – On average there had been a murder a day in the city over the past year, many of them within a five-mile radius of where they sat. Drug dealers may have shot innocent people on this very block. They called them mushrooms, because they seemed to sprout from the pavement.  The dealers laughed about it.  You can bet people didn’t get arrested in those murders in less than an hour’s time.

VICTIMS – No, she got it.  She understood their anger and frustration.  But she was uncomfortable around people who based their identities on being victims – even if she herself had done it from time to time.  It was counterproductive.  Instead of healing, these women ended up tearing off their scabs every week.  Their idea of rebellion was to serve cupcakes at a wake, celebrating the fact that someone else had carried out their pathetic revenge fantasies.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org

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