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Charm City: A Tess Monaghan Novel (Hardcover)

by Laura Lippman (Author)
Key Phrases: morris chair, brass elephant, basketball deal, Jack Sterling, Rosita Ruiz, Colleen Reganhart (more...)

3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

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Baltimore Blues (Tess Monaghan Mysteries) by Laura Lippman
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Butchers Hill (Tess Monaghan Mysteries) by Laura Lippman
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Editorial Reviews

Review
"Both entertaining and unexpectedly touching. More Please." -- -- Baltimore Sun --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Review
"Both entertaining and unexpectedly touching. More Please." (Baltimore Sun )

Mystery fans can anticipate an engrosising series. (Publishers Weekly )

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Product Details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: William Morrow (December 18, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 006121003X
ISBN-13: 978-0061210037
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #342,591 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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This is item 2 in The Tess Monaghan Series.

Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
morris chair, brass elephant, basketball deal, raw patches

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jack Sterling, Rosita Ruiz, Colleen Reganhart, Wink Wynkowski, Miss Monaghan, Paul Tucci, The Point, Cross Keys, San Antonio, Uncle Spike, Fells Point, Linda Wynkowski, Lea Wynkowski, Lionel Mabry, Miss Ruiz, Tess Monaghan, Page One, Roger Hehnke, Detective Tull, Leakin Park, Poe White Trash, Berrie Athol, Gravel Voice, Lion King, Patterson Park

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	73% buy the item featured on this page: Charm City: A Tess Monaghan Novel 3.7 out of 5 stars (35) $16.96
	9% buy Baltimore Blues (Tess Monaghan Mysteries) 4.2 out of 5 stars (30) $7.99
	7% buy The Sugar House: A Tess Monaghan Mystery 4.5 out of 5 stars (19) $7.99
	6% buy The Last Place 4.5 out of 5 stars (17) $7.99

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Customer Reviews

35 Reviews

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (35 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 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 (REAL NAME)

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.

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9 of 11 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 (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (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.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Second in the series, August 30, 2005

By	Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Heroine's stupidity is overwhelming; don't read this drivel
Tess is a complete idiot about Crow and it really made me MAD!!! I liked the stuff about Esskay and the mystery, but the stuff with Crow seriously peeved me off--it lost a star... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Peabody823

4.0 out of 5 stars Angieville: CHARM CITY
CHARM CITY picks up a few months after the events of Baltimore Blues: A Tess Monaghan Novel (Tess Monaghan Mysteries). Read more

Published 8 months ago by Angela Thompson

5.0 out of 5 stars A great follow-up
CHARM CITY appeals to me even more than the murder mystery that kick-started this series, BALTIMORE BLUES, because it deals with one of my personal favorite issues: journalism... Read more

Published 10 months ago by Elizabeth Donald

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, unexpected ending
As usual, Laura Lippmann has done a great job of writing the adventures of Ms. Tess Monaghan. This is a nice book to read, it's fun, easy and you'll probably not guess the ending... Read more

Published 13 months ago by JB

2.0 out of 5 stars More Clunky Than Charming
The first Tess Monaghan book left me relatively unimpressed, the pacing was sluggish, the writing clunky, the heroine more annoying than engaging, and the plotting sometimes... Read more

Published 17 months ago by A. Ross

4.0 out of 5 stars Baltimore as you've never seen it before!
Tess Monaghan made the move from journalist to private investigator, but finds her newspaper days aren't quite behind her. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Robert E. Keesey

4.0 out of 5 stars Skulduggery at a Baltimore Newspaper
Charm City, the second installment in Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series, has been reissued in hardcover this year, a decade after first appearing in paperback. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Kevin Joseph

2.0 out of 5 stars Warning! Not a New Book!
This book newly released in hardcover appeared to me to be a new Tess mystery, but to my disappointment it is just a hardcover version of this book released as a paperback in... Read more

Published 19 months ago by D. Martin

4.0 out of 5 stars good, but not great
I really like Ms. Lippman's writing and am steadily working my way through all the Tess Monaghan novels, finding that I either like or love them all, which is saying something... Read more

Published on June 5, 2007 by Gabriela Perez

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Charming
I had a very hard time trying to get into this book. Finally, I completely gave up, and simply scanned the pages of the story. Read more

Published on June 5, 2006 by Kimberly A. Brown

› See all 35 customer reviews...

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