Charm City [Hardcover]

Laura Lippman (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Avon; Book Club (BCE/BOMC) edition (1997)
• ISBN-10: 1568658567
• ISBN-13: 978-1568658568
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,691,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime 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. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor's Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association. Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light. Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Charmless detective in Charm City: a great evocation of Baltimore., May 23, 2006

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Charm City (Tess Monaghan Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Having read two of Lippman's mysteries, I'd classify the plots as solid and competent, interesting but not engrossing. The books excel at describing Baltimore (I grew up in Baltimore County.) Lippman's writing about the city is wonderfully vivid and, more than most, chronicles not only the buildings, but the people and I think would bring the city to life even for those who aren't familiar with it. In this respect, I think that Lippman is better than Anne Tyler. I do have one caveat, one would not guess from this book that most of the population of Baltimore is black.

The main problem with the book, unfortunately, is the heroine who is the most implausible private eye I've ever encountered. Miss Marple would eat her for lunch. Tess Monaghan is a very immature, whiny 29-year old, who usually seems about 10 years younger, so diffident that she reminds me of the gooey black mud that coats the bottom of some parts of the Bay and its tributaries: a passive nuisance. She bickers pointlessly with her parents: for example, Tess takes it as a personal affront that her mother likes monochromatic color schemes. This doesn't seem to be the result of losing her only job after the newspaper she worked for folded. She only took that job because one of her friends was a reporter, and when she didn't get a job with the surviving paper, she didn't know what to do. It is hard to fathom why her friends have decided that she should go into detective work, which requires energy, boldness and is potentially dangerous.

Tess strikes me as a generally charmless character; I suppose that's why Lippmen gives her a dog in the second book. I often don't find hard-boiled detectives likeable, but as long as I respect them and the stories are good, I don't need to. (Tess is more like half-baked.) A certain sour pettiness goes with the genre. The detective observes all things great and small with an acerbic carping that presumably is intended to show a superior discerning sensibility or entirely too much familiarity with the world's seamy underbelly, but in Tess it's more like tiresome querulousness.

After doing a respectable job on her first case, Tess strikes out completely on her second, surviving only because a friend who is considerably faster on the uptake comes to her rescue. Somehow, even as Tess goes about her detecting, what she is shown as doing just doesn't mesh with how she is shown as thinking. Lippman throws in the occasional Good Deed to make her heroine seem more admirable, but it seems more like a formulaic plot contrivance than a natural outcome of Tess' personality.

Tess' aunts and uncles, on the other hand are charming and vividly drawn and supply the character interest. So I'd say that if you like books with a strong sense of place, this is a good bet when you're looking for something to read. If character is important to you, or you only like to read this sub-genre is it's really good, I'd look for something else.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Second in the series, August 29, 2005

By 

Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Charm City (Tess Monaghan Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Former reporter for a now extinct Baltimore newspaper, Tess Monahan is working as an investigator for a city lawyer, waiting to get her license as a PI. Business tycoon, Wink Wynkowski, is trying to bring pro basketball back to Baltimore, but a full scale expose of his lurid past appears on the front page of the local paper. The editors of the paper, the Baltimore Beacon-Light, had rejected the story, not wanting the sordid details of this man's criminal past to jeopardize their chances of getting a top team for the city, but, somehow the story appeared in the morning edition. Almost immediately, Wink's body is found in his car, apparently having suicided by leaving the motor running. Tess is employed by the paper to find out how the story got into print and extends her search by interviewing Wink's wives, the present and former. A constant irritant to Tess is an abrasive, ambitious reporter on the paper, Rosita Ruiz, a Latina who doesn't hesitate to use chequebook journalism or to invent stories to suit her own agenda. When Rosita also commits suicide after being fired, Tess is convinced that both Wink and Rosita have been murdered and sets out to prove just that. The story is just a little too bitsy for me, but there are some great characters being established who will, presumably, continue into further books.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great 2nd Book!!, July 27, 2005

By 

Raymond M. Rose "Rainman" (Pottstown, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Charm City (Tess Monaghan Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Laura Lippman never lets me down. She really doesn't. I just finished HP6 and I was a little burned-out (something about reading 651 pages in two days that burns a person out). I needed something to just enjoy and not have to be reading every single word and analyzing what was going to happen next. Laura was just what I needed. Tess was just what I needed.

As 2nd books go, this one was very good. It was a little uneven in that it gets really heavy and intense later but is in odd contrast to the beginning, which isn't so intense. The addition of Esskay and Tess' emerging feelings for the dog are great. More of Crow, which is something that is also great. These are fantastic characters that one can't help but wanting to fall back in with them and enjoy your time among them.

I'm going to read the third book. I feel like I'm on a Laura Lippman kick. Not a bad to place to be, let me tell you.