Customer Reviews

What the Dead Know: A Novel

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4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

This is one of the finest suspense novels I've read in years. Lippman is always terrific, whether she is writing her Edgar-winning Tess Monaghan series or stand-alone crime novels, but this book is exceptional, even by her high standards. Inspired by an actual incident, WHAT THE DEAD KNOW is a brilliant examination of old crimes and their present consequences.

In 1975, two teenage sisters disappeared from a Baltimore shopping mall, and their fate was never determined. Now, thirty years later, an emotionally unstable woman claims to be one of the missing sisters. Her story has a lot of holes in it, and the search is on for the truth of what happened on that long-ago day. Lippman brings just the right Gothic/Noir touches to her masterful tale, slowly building the tension until it is almost unbearable. Don't miss this haunting, beautifully written novel. Highly recommended.

On Easter weekend in 1975 two sisters disappeared. Eleven year old Heather Bethany and her 15-year-old sister, Sunny, had gone to the mall, Security Mall, and vanished without a trace although there would be rumors, "...sightings of the girls as far away as Georgia, bogus ransom demands, fears of cults and counterculturists. After all, Patty Hearst had been taken just the year before. Kidnapping was big in the seventies."

Time passes, some thirty years, and a woman flees the scene of a traffic accident. Later she's found wandering, apparently deranged, without any money or identification. She's taken to St. Agnes Hospital, checked in as a Jane Doe because if she knows who she is she refuses to say.

Thus begins Edgar Award winning author Laura Lippman's riveting story about a family, once a strong, loving unit or were they?

Detective Kevin Infante is dispatched to the hospital to question the mysterious woman. He doesn't go eagerly as Infante is a tough cop, cynical, a memorable character who views the world and many of its inhabitants with a jaundiced eye. When the woman still refuses to speak his solution is to send her to jail.

Kay Sullivan, the social worker at St. Agnes, is the one person who befriends the woman, and when the woman says, "I'm going to say a name. It's a name you'll know," Kay is convinced Heather Bethany has surfaced after some three decades. But Infante doesn't believe this for a minute.

How to prove whether she is Heather or not? The police decide finding the mother of the Bethany girls is their only hope. But, would a mother recognize her daughter after this length of time?

Lippman who was a news reporter at the Baltimore Sun again sets her story in Baltimore, a city she obviously loves and knows well. Her narrative is meticulously crafted, moving in time from the day the girls disappeared to the present time. As scenes change readers are made aware of what the parents went through following the loss of their daughters, their attempts to cope and the final impact on them.

This author creates some of the most vivid characters to be found on a page, and again presents a story that haunts.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

In "What the Dead Know," Laura Lippman displays her literary flair and stylistic genius in a tightly woven, hypnotic, highly intelligent adventure.

In 1975, two sisters vanished without a trace from a Baltimore mall. It was a dead end crime---no reliable witnesses, no clues, no leads, no hope.

Thirty years later a hit and run driver (with no ID) claims to be Heather Bethany (one of the sisters).

She has knowledge that only the sisters would have. As the story shifts between the decades, between fact and fiction, between imposter and the genuine article; detective Kevin Infante (a wonderful character) feels something about "Heather's" story is out of kilter.

The skeptical Infante is unconventional and uses good old-fashioned shoe leather to track down clues, hunches and intuition. His efforts lead him to believe Heather may be one a half dozen identities---or maybe all of them, or none of them.

The three-dimensional characters are caught up in loss, redemption, scrambled identities, in this evocative tale of intrigue.

Filled with pop culture touchstones from the different eras, this powerfully suspenseful crime story, seamlessly spooled out from various points of view will leave you sleep deprived.

Laura Lippman is an uncompromising novelist who is dazzling at hiding clues in plain sight. She creates a morass of deception where the details are as important as the narrative.

"What the Dead Know" is subtle, shrewd and so tightly plotted you cannot afford to skip a page.

There's no question in my mind that Lippman is a very talented author. This book grabbed me pretty much right from the beginning and I could hardly wait for her to dole out the bits and pieces of information that led to the big picture of the whole story. However, while the pacing was good and her characters were very vivid, I did not care for the ending and didn't find it all that realistic.

The character who stood out the most for me was Heather. Though she is ostensibly the victim, she is not a sympathetic character. She's such a narcissist that I was really turned off by her. I found it feasible that someone who'd been through such an ordeal could emerge with this type of psychology but I found Heather really appalling and distasteful at times. This was actually rather refreshing to me and I think it gave the story more resonance than a tearful, weepy, and really "victimlike" victim would have. She was compelling in a rather creepy way. This considered, though, I didn't find what ultimately happened to her in the end to be convincing.

Another weakness of this novel was that the police seemed to me to be a bit stereotypically portrayed. Kevin was far too much of a two-dimensional character and, for that reason, I didn't find him very interesting. The womanizing policeman with a history of failed marriages has been done to death and it would have been more interesting to me had Kevin been more unexpected. Lippman does deliver somewhat with Kevin's female ex-partner but this character doesn't get a lot of pages, which is disappointing. I think the novel would have been even better had she been the lead on the case.

The great strength of this novel is the way it leaps from present to past again and then weaves all of the threads of the story into one tapestry. I especially liked reading about Dave and Miriam as the more they were fleshed out, the more compelling I found the overall story. I found this akin to my own experiences growing up, as I came to realize that my parents were more than just Mom and Dad, they were people too. Dave and Miriam are complex, as is the structure of their marriage, and it was fascinating to read their thoughts on how their own actions and choices may or may not have influenced what happened to their daughters.

Overall, I liked this work and would like to read more of Lippman's but I didn't find it quite worth of the high praise that I've seen lavished upon it.

It was a parent's worst nightmare. Sunny and Heather Bethany disappeared from a Baltimore mall in 1975 and no real trace of them was ever found. Now thirty years later a disoriented woman walks away from a motor vehicle accident and claims to be one of the Bethany sisters.

Author Laura Lippman built a story spanning the thirty years, moving back and forth in time and bringing the characters to life. Sunny, fifteen, and Heather, eleven, are realistic and well-delineated. Their parents, Miriam and Dave, survive the loss in very different ways. The present-day mystery woman is abrupt and secretive, not likable and not easy to know. While two of the characters seemed to me to be somewhat stereotyped, the rest had the kind of realistic loose ends that only a good writer can create.

What the Dead Know feels like a novel rather than a suspense novel, if you care to make that distinction. There is a great deal of beautifully written back-story and some readers may think it's extraneous to the plot line, but the narrative conveys a vivid sense of time and place that is its own reward. The bonus I found in this book is the way Lippman wrapped it all together into a surpisingly well-supported ending.

Recently I've read several books in which the narrative moves back and forth along the time line of the story. I'm a little wary of that structure but Lippman handled it beautifully.

I listened to the unabridged CD version of this book and found the performance by Linda Emond to be very effective. While I prefer a book in print, this is one audio presentation I can recommend enthusiastically. I'll definitely be reading more from this fine writer.

Linda Bulger, 2008

From the very beginning I was blown away by What the Dead Know - it's the American equivalent of a Ruth Rendell book in its penetrating psychology, mordant wit, perspicacious view of modern life and expert mystery plot, which was, as it should be, surprising and inevitable at the same time. Since I think that Rendell is not just one of the finest mystery writers but one of the finest writers in the world period that's no small praise.

Like Rendell's best books (many of which are written under the name Barbara Vine) What the Dead Know is a stand alone rather than a series book. It centers on that great old mystery trope of Brat Farrar and countless others - is the adult who appears out of nowhere really the grown up version of the child who disappeared so mysteriously years ago or an imposter? In the end the theme is simply identity, and Lippman explores it masterfully, moving through the consciousness of many characters (thankfully in the third person), slipping through time and space to construct a moving picture of our time. I'll gleefully point out that Lippman is no product of an academic MFA program, but learned her craft the old fashioned way (you know, like that Hemingway guy) as a reporter.

It was also very encouraging to see that this book entered the NYT bestseller list at #11, which (almost) restores my faith in the American reading public. I'm not going to go on and on about it, except to recommend it most highly. It certainly blows away most of the "serious" fiction that's out there these days, suspenseful while remaining profound and engaging.

(In the interest of total transparency I must reveal that Laura Lippman once stole some Fig Newtons from me, but that act did not influence this review in any way).

Okay, a disclaimer first. I get points from bzzagent for reviewing this.

I'm a bit groggy, I'll admit. I was up most of the night finishing this book. About a quarter of the way through I was able to put it down, but once I picked it up again, I couldn't let go.

The structure of the book is interwoven, person to person, year to year. At first this was disconcerting. But then pulled me in. I had it partially figured out before the end, yet I still could not stop reading.

I usually don't give plot reviews since so many others do that. What I can say is, if you are a fan of Ms. Lippman's Tess series, don't be afraid of trying this book. If you are a fan of Ms. Lippman, period, then you won't be disappointed. If you have never read her before, read this, then go back and get your hands on all of her other books.

Two young sisters, Sunny and Heather Bethany, disappear from a Maryland shopping mall. The case has gone sub-zero until thirty years later, when a woman apprehended for a hit-and-run claims to be Heather. Kevin Infante, the detective assigned to the case, struggles to identify the woman's true identity and, in the process, solve the Bethany case.

The plot unfolds in a non-linear manner that many will find distracting, relying extensively on flashbacks and multiple point-of-view characters. The strength of this narrative structure is that is allows the reader to experience the tragic events from different perspectives and come to know all of the important characters on a very personal level. The weakness of this approach is that the novel lacks a real center or protagonist, forcing the reader to reorient at the start of each chapter to figure out who happens to be narrating.

This was my first Laura Lippman novel but likely will not be my last. The strength of her characterization, skill at building and maintaining suspense, and willingness to stray from the linear format of the usual police procedural impressed me, notwithstanding the noted shortcomings.

How does a parent live from one minute to the next when a child has disappeared? In this interesting novel, Ms. Lippman shows us how two parents grieve and approach the tragedy when both their daughters go missing. In a cold case genre, one of the missing daughters shows up via a traffic accident and the story begins. We learn about the parents, the girls, the detective involved and the minor characters who contribute haunting revelations. I thought the mother, Miriam, was particularly interesting and she was a sharp contrast to her husband, Dave. There's a good mixture of drama: possible kidnapping and murder, adultery, bad cops and how one can not escape one's genetic make up. I did figure out the ending but, except for a few flaws, Ms. Lippman presented a solid mystery and character study.

Laura Lippman has been a favorite since I first came across Baltimore Blues. This is a stand alone - not a Tess Monaghan book - and, as the subject says, this is Ms Lippman's best one yet.

Told from several different viewpoints over 30-years, this is a very tightly-woven tale with the solution jumping into my head a mere paragraph before it was revealed.

This is a real page-turner. I actually picked it up yesterday a a local signing and came home, made dinner, and settled down to read the 1st few chapters. At 1:30 am, I had finished the book without realizing what time it was. I literally could not put it down.

By the way, if you have a chance to attend a signing, do go. Ms. Lippman puts on one heck of a good presentation.