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EVERY SECRET THING
by Laura Lippman
Orion, June 2004
417 pages
6.99GBP
ISBN: 0752863894


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

To use soccer parlance, I've never rated Laura Lippman as Premiership standard, but she's certainly high up there in Division One. EVERY SECRET THING, her first standalone novel outside of the Tess Monaghan series, reinforces that view.

It's the story of two 11-year-old girls, Alice and Ronnie, who are on their way home from a swimming party and see an unattended pushchair with a baby in. Four days later the baby is found dead and the two girls are arrested and found guilty. They insist, though, that they were only trying to be helpful and look after the baby.

Seven years later they are released from prison and return home. But then strange things start happening; children disappear for short periods of time. And then another child goes missing.

The central premise seems to have echoes of a number of court cases internationally, so I have no idea whether Lippman picked up the plot idea from her days as a reporter on the Baltimore Sun. Speaking of which, there must be something in the water at that particular paper as it's a very fertile ground for fiction writers -- David Simon, whose investigative book inspired the wonderful TV show Homicide: Life on the Streets, worked there, as does Dan Fesperman, a new and shining name in the thriller firmament.

Lippman is a polished and accomplished writer with a journalist's clean, crisp prose. She does setting a touch better than characters -- suburban Baltimore stuck in my mind far longer than any of the people, although that might also be because I could picture those wonderful, sweeping Homicide credits! The plotting is tight, although the final twist that several people had raved about to me didn't excite me a great deal. I think I'd more or less guessed what was going on.

EVERY SECRET THING is one of those books, though. where I really wasn't engaged by any of the characters. The fact that the book is told from multiple points-of-view might be part of the reason. Narration wanders between Alice, Ronnie, Alice's mother Helen, attorney Sharon Kerpelman, detective Nancy Porter, reporter Mira Jenkins and Cynthia Barnes (mother of Olivia, the baby abducted by Alice and Ronnie) -- and I can't guarantee I haven't forgotten someone else who just happened to be passing!

So . . . it's a good read, it's well worth your time, mainly for its plotting and setting, but it hasn't quite sneaked into my top division.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, June 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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