#laura lippman

Want to read like a librarian? Here's what LCPL librarian Anne has been reading lately. She's on a mystery kick!

Read: Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman

A cozy mystery about a widow in her 70s treating herself to a European vacation. A fun and wholesome read. 

Reading: I'm Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home by Fergus Craig

So far this book is super funny, and I'm loving all the characters!

To Read: The Only One Left by Riley Sager

This was recommended to me, and I thought I would try branching out from my usual cozy mysteries to a darker storyline.

it was a valuable source of baltimore slang for my the wire fic, ofc!

s2 is recognizable by its setting, @sobotka recently pointed out that ziggy’s from dundalk (upd: he’s from glen burnie, oops)

the closed bethlehem steel plant, which spiros points out to frank, disguising a threat as a reminder of what awaits the longshoremen if they don’t cooperate with the greeks.

the greektown and its tavernas.

the marble stoop of a little house, scrubbed by an old woman in the polish neighborhood while, right next to her, nick sobotka and frog make a drug deal — and by the end of s2, she gives up, planning to sell that little house

tess’ uncle is lester freamon! gotcha, ha. no, he’s not, not really, but you can recognise his 13 years and 4 months here

and the saddest part for me TW SA:

After seeing many recommendations on TikTok I finally got the Sunburn book and it quickly sucked me into the story. Polly's a complicated character, who is often in a gray area - she does questionable stuff, but it's for a good reason. Life had screwed her over, so she took control and screwed it back. And in between all that complicated scheming she unexpectedly found love. The tension lasted until the last pages, leaving you wondering what she did and didn't do.

Don't get me wrong, this was a great book, but it wasn't the life-changing queer romance I was promised, so I did some googling and quickly realised that sometimes it's useful to check the author. So then I got the right Sunburn.

Well, this book was pure poetry. Breathtaking, evoking, intimate, both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

I don't know if it was those poetic descriptions or the atmosphere of a small Irish village, love to the point of devotion or Catholic trauma, but I kept getting a feeling while reading this book as if I was listening to a Hozier song, more precisely Take Me to Church. It shows in how Lucy, at some point, began to think that sex may not be the sacred union she once imagined it to be, but a wonderful disgrace. It's in her knowing that there is evil in her yearning, she just couldn't see where yet. It's in her thoughts that being with Susannah is a sin, but being without her is a tragedy.

This is the perfect queer coming-of-age story, where we see Lucy first realising and coming to terms with her own sexuality, then exploring it. The devastating part here is that she had to choose between being with the girl she loved or staying in her mother's good graces - no matter the choice, she would hurt someone and also loose a part of herself. I'm not even sure what I would do in a situation like that.

Lady in the Lake — Official Trailer | Apple TV+

When the disappearance of a young girl grips the city of Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966, the lives of two women converge on a fatal collision course. Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman) is a Jewish housewife seeking to shed a secret past and reinvent herself as an investigative journalist, and Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) is a mother navigating the political underbelly of Black Baltimore while struggling to provide for her family. Their disparate lives seem parallel at first, but when Maddie becomes fixated on Cleo’s mystifying death, a chasm opens that puts everyone around them in danger.