Laura Lippman - Hardly Knew Her: Stories

Girls Gone Wild

Other Cities, Not My Own

My Baby Walks the Streets of Baltimore

Scratch A Woman

B y anyone's estimation, Laura Lippman is doing all right. She's a New York Times bestselling author, is highly respected by her peers and the critical establishment, and has carved out a nice life for herself in Baltimore, a city she loves and represents. Which begs the question: why a short story collection?

It's not like she needs to feed the pipeline with product. This isn't a stopgap measure to appease the public while she struggles with her next book. She's certainly not delinquent in the delivery of a novel to her publisher. Shoot, Laura has consistently published quality, challenging novels every year since she's been at this. Plus, she's found a large audience.

So now, time to cash in. Right?

That's what you'd assume. Readers should be wary, having been burned in the past by writers who have exploited their success by publishing tossed-off collections of odds and ends and never-should-have-been short stories. But once you begin to read this anthology, you'll find that Laura's stories stand apart from her novels in revelatory and satisfying ways. Plus, they're beautifully written and contain the kind of offbeat observations and insights that someday, no doubt, will come to be known as "Lippman moments." Finally, these stories tell actual stories. Laura, thankfully, is not afraid of plot. (Can you hear me, writing school graduates? Lord, have mercy.)

Do not expect the obvious. There are two Tess Monaghan stories included here, for the Monaghan faithful. One is the crowd-pleasing "The Shoeshine Man's Regrets," in which Tess gets an old shoeshine man off (not like that, and you ought to wash your mind out with soap for thinking it). As a bonus, there is a clever, revealing "interview" with Tess, "The Accidental Detective" (all respect to Baltimore's own Anne Tyler), as well.

The centerpiece of this book is a novella, "Scratch a Woman," that was written for this collection. To say that it is about a suburban prostitute and her twisted sister does not do it justice. It has so much going on in it, in terms of ideas, that it could easily be expanded into a novel (and a very interesting film). It is one of the finest pieces of writing that Laura has done.

The rest of the collection includes tales told from a variety of viewpoints. I count five first-person stories, and many others from the perspective of women ranging from teens to aged, two from men who have been less than faithful to their wives (spousal betrayal being somewhat of a recurring theme in these stories, and if you're thinking of pulling the trigger yourself, rest uneasy that, in Laura's world, cheating never ends well), and two from the POV of young black men. In all of them, I was completely convinced of the voices. And, in case anyone got the impression that Laura only knows Baltimore, there is an entire section devoted to stories set in places like Dublin ("Honor Bar"), Washington, D.C. ("ARM and the Woman"), and New Orleans (the harrowing "Pony Girl," a mythic ode to the dark side of the party).

There are many high moments, points when you stop reading and say, "Damn, she's good," but let me mention just a few. "Easy as A-B-C," concerning a working-class contractor and his psychosexual relationship with one of the new breed of moneyed Locust Point residents, says more about the changing modern city, in its economical way, than most novelists manage in their latest door-stopper. "The Crack Cocaine Diet" hits like a bat to the temple, a "wacky" tour de force from Laura that is as funny as it is surprising. "Hardly Knew Her," describing a Beth Steel family in 1975 Dundalk--a girl, Sofia, and her degenerate gambler father is stunning in its emotional nuance and period detail. In "Femme Fatale," a woman of sixty-eight gets involved in senior citizen porn, with unexpected results. "Dear Penthouse Forum (A First Draft)," whose plot I will not describe, is inventive and somewhat twisted. Actually, it's kinda sick (get help, Laura, but don't stop writing).

With each year, and each book, Laura Lippman's work has gotten deeper, more intricate, and more ambitious. This collection makes a strong case for her range and talent. She got both, in spades.

George Pelecanos
S ILVER S PRING , M ARYLAND