Customer Reviews

To the Power of Three

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is one of the must reads of 2005. Lippman's powerful characterizations of three high school girls in a well heeled Baltimore suburb are completely gripping. By alternating between various points of view, Lippman is able to give the reader a completely dimensional view of all the characters and why the school shooting that begins the book happened the way it did. The shooting is the beginning and the novel works backwards, tracing the girls friendship and development from 3rd grade through high school, as well as documenting their complete social enviornment. This book is written with such exqusite perception that I could have read on for 800 pages rather than the 400 provided, but for the student of human nature this is not to be missed. Oh yeah, it also has a great story.

I agree with other reviewers here that it's her writing that makes this book a good read. Her ability to bring you where the characters are is outstanding.

But what about the story?

I am an avid mystery/thriller reader...thus I read that way. Lippman gives you all wonderful details about characters...which you attend to as the reader, trying to figure which detail is the "clue" that is how the book will end. To her credit...I did go in a few directions of why what happened...happened.

But...I got to the last page, slammed the book closed in my hand and said "you've GOT to be kidding!'...and shook my head going into the shower (mind you I got up 2 hours EARLY to finish the book!)

So that is the conflict in my review. Obviously it was good enough for me to want to give up 2 hours sleep for to see how it ended...but I was ticked I did.

In retrospect I would say if you read the book and do not approach it as a mystery/thriller genre...then it's a good read. If you're looking for that genre...I wouldn't say it satisfies.

The psychological thriller deserves its own designation as a mystery subgenre. It certainly is becoming more popular. The Brits seem to have perfected it with the work of Ruth Rendall, Minette Walters, Andrew Taylor and the remarkable Mandesue Heller among many many others. These books have in common very strong characterizations with the underlying sense of foreboding. Either a crime has taken place and the characters must deal with that or there is the chilling possibility of a crime that might occur at any moment. These books slowly and inexorably bind the reader up with a whole host of tensions. The characters might be likable or odious. The one thing they all have in common is the ability to make a reader read compulsively to discover the ultimate conclusion and may take its time getting there.

Laura Lippman, so well known from her Tess Monaghan series, wrote her first stand alone which was published two years ago entitled EVERY SECRET THING. This marked a remarkable change in her writing while revealing her ability to fully flesh out human suffering. It is a chilling novel that many considered the very best of the year. Now she returns with another psychological thriller even richer and more fully detailed than the last work.

Three friends are found in a school bathroom. All are shot. Kat Hartigan, the popular one who everybody loves, is dead with a gunshot wound to the chest. Josie Patel, the athletic one, has been shot in the foot and the brooding actress Perri Kahn, said to be the cause of it all, is critically wounded with an apparently self inflicted bullet through her face. The question that must be answered is- what actually happened and why? We then travel back in time to that day, many years ago when the three seemingly inseparable friends first met and proceed to travel ever so slowly down this inevitable road to destruction where all answers eventually lie.

Laura Lippman in her second standalone again displays her mastery of the psychological thriller. She writes with a true depth of understanding the human character which gives her novels their profound realism. This is by no means a fast quick read but will certainly reward the patient reader. It is a superb work by one of the finest writers of crime fiction in this country. Laura Lippman is at the height of her writing powers. Easily one of the best of the year.

Police investigate a high school shooting where one girl is dead and two injured. The trio has been friends since grade school and no one can understand how such a tragedy could happen. The story returns to their earliest days together, from grade school, middle school and climaxes in their final days of senior school with the usual teenaged angst and dramas. I became very bored with these girls quite early in the book, with the petty squabbles, jealousies and one-upmanship supposedly attributed to all girls of this age. If this is true, then thank heavens that I was born into an age where your every waking moment didn't have to be devoted to gaining credits and full of organised activities, but was allowed to develop at my own pace. I'm not really sure just what the shooting was about, except that it was exacerbated by pushy, manipulative parents and children who were much too self absorbed!

To the Power of Three by Laura Lippman is a modern day tragedy. Lippman takes a school shooting, intertwines it with the story of three long time friends, includes the background of a drama setting and adds other characters typical of high schools anywhere-- the Goths (although they are not called the Goths in this book,) the Geeks, the Freaks, and the Jocks. She also adds a teacher who, like many teachers, is under the mistaken impression that the kids will talk to her because she has earned their trust, never realizing that the teens don't trust any of the adults, that this is one ting that binds all teens together no matter which niche they fit into, none of them trust adults.

There are numerous threads running through this book, and Lippman doesn't let a single one slip. She examines them one by one, then pulls them all together at the end. It's the story of a tragedy, and in particular the story of how a well meant act can lead to murder.

Three girls became best friends in their third grade. Now, a decade later, one of them is dead, one badly wounded, and the third injured in a school shooting. The evidence seems compelling--one of the three girls brought the gun to school. But for what happened next, the one witness's testimony and that left by physical evidence varies. It's up to Police Sergeant Harold Lenhardt to piece together the clues and see if he can arrive at the truth. Guidance counselor Alexa Cunningham wants to help--but she also wants to get Lenhardt into bed which makes her less than the ideal assistant. Still, Cunningham knows one thing--somewhere, there's another witness.

The story veers back between the tramatic post-shooting period to the earlier lives of the three girls, to the pact they made in the woods behind their homes that they would always remain friends, through their discovery of boys, until their senior year when something went horribly wrong with their friendship. Lenhardt believes that if he could uncover what happened, he would arrive at the truth, but no one is talking.

TO THE POWER OF THREE is a strange book. None of the characters is especially likable, certainly not admirable although Lenhardt is sympathetic. The three girls/young women were self-absorbed and largely indifferent to everyone around them. Cunningham is superior and annoying. Bit player Eve is interesting but doesn't really have the motivation to drive the story forward. In fact, that is the main problem with the book. Only Lenhardt, whose job, after all, is to solve murders, has a clear goal. And he never seems to do much toward achieving that goal with the final solution to the mystery not really coming from his investigation at all.

Still, author Laura Lippman's writing is so strong that she pulled me into the story, made me care about these rather shallow (and all too human) characters, each caught up in their own petty problems, infidelities, and dreams. Lippman holds up a mirror to society and lets us see ourselves. It's an unusual approach in a mystery--much more common in literary fiction. But Lippman manages to pull it off, make it interesting.

One does not simply read Laura Lippman's "To the Power of Three"...one becomes immersed in it.

Told from multiple points of view, it is in fact a character driven novel. The secondary characters are just as vivid and infused with distinct personalities and back stories as those in the lead roles.

Three suburban high school seniors (inseparable since third grade) are involved in a shooting in a locked girl's restroom...one dead, one in a coma and one shot in the foot.

What precisely did go down in the restroom? Who in fact pulled the trigger?

Homicide Sergeant Harold Lendardt and partner Kevin Infante come across inconsistencies between the crime scene and account given by the coherent survivor.

The setting in the upscale development of Glendale is illusory, but the way the "event" affects the entire community is all too authentic.

Everyone is so fully realized, it is effortless to picture the novel as nonfiction. They all resonate with authenticity.

And, the plot is crisp, suspenseful, taut and moves along in a calculated rhythm. The reader is enticed to learn more about all the players...and care about them.

"To the Power of Three" hooks you from start to finish.

There is no doubt that Laura Lippman has her finger on the social psychological pulse of the American teenager. In To The Power of Three, she examines the very complicated social terrain of high school relationships.

Perri and Kat, who have been life-long friends, bring Josie into the group in third grade. The three girls are inseparable until the summer of the junior year of high school when they, for no reason obvious to outsiders, just separate, Josie and Kat remaining friends and Perri going her own way.

The trio is reunited on the last day of their senior year when a shooting in the school bathroom leaves one dead, another in a coma and the third shot in the foot. Shock waves and regret go deep, leaving the community, their classmates and families to speculate what really happened, and then examine the part they may have played in this tragedy.

As Detective Sergeant Harold Lenhardt leads the investigation, things aren't adding up, people are protecting their secrets. As a byproduct of the investigation, he begins to think about the things his daughter will have to deal with as she becomes a teenager--and he doesn't like what he's imagining.

Armchair Interviews says: This novel gets below the surface of the issues to the real evil in our world, which is as innocuous as you can imagine, and that is scarier than someone hiding in the closet with a bloody axe!

To the Power of Three by Laura Lippman is the telling of how the friendship of three girls ends in tragedy. It stars when one of the girls, Perri, shoots Kat in the chest and Josie in the foot, then shoots herself in the face. Lippman than alternates back and forth from flashback to present day, drawing out the complicated relationships between the three girls and their families, as well as other characters who are seemingly peripheral to the story. Everything in the book, however, has a purpose and Lippman brings it all together in the end. I can't say that the ending was satisfying, because to me it was tragic, but it made sense.

If you read this book, be prepared to examine examples of various human frailties and flaws and be prepared for a vaguely unsettling end. This is not a book to be picked up, read, and forgotten, but rather, a book to be discussed and pondered over. Lippman is to be complimented for avoiding taking the easy way out and sticking to a story that had to be hard to tell.

I love Laura Lippman's stand-alone suspense novels. In this novel, she beautifully and hideously captures the difficult and complicated psychology of adolescents, parental pressures, debilitating friendships, grudges that end badly. If you enjoy To the Power of Three, move on to Every Secret Thing, her first departure from writing a series. Highly recommended!

Perri O'Shaughnessy