Ask Laura Lippman -- Special One Day Only Group! discussion

If you have a question for Laura Lippman, you can ask it in this thread. Laura will be answering questions on September 13.

Hi Laura,

I won The Most Dangerous Thing through a giveaway on Goodreads, and finished it about five minutes ago. Excellent stuff, and I always enjoy your take on Baltimore, my adopted home.

My two questions:

1) There are sections of the book that use a first person collective "we" as a narrator, but it doesn't seem to be connected to any individual. My theory is that that the "we" is an embodiment of the childrens' group -their five pointed star - at its strongest and most cohesive. Am I on the right track?

2) You said that this novel has autobiographical elements, and you went out of your way in your author's note to say that the houses in the book don't exist. Did you have any fear that in drawing on settings from your own childhood, people would read themselves into characters?

Thanks for your time!

Hi Laura,
I've read and enjoyed all of your stand-alone novels, and a thread I notice that runs through the majority of them is that of the fascinating, complicated bonds formed between girls and young women. These relationships run the gambit from adoring younger sister to disturbing studies of manipulation and control between friends. Each seems so true-to-life, not to mention pertinent to the language we keep hearing in the media - "bully," "mean girl," etc., though you have been portraying these types of "friendships" long before the media got wind of them. (Even the protagonist in I'd Know You Anywhere, as an adult, is disturbed to recognize traits of a bully in her own daughter.)
My question is: Where do these characters come from? Did you observe girls behaving this way when you were growing up, or maybe from things you saw as a reporter?
Thanks again for taking the time to connect to your readers in this way! I can't wait to read The Most Dangerous Thing!
Abby

Hi Laura,

I, too, always enjoy your writing about Baltimore. I lived there for a couple of years and used to visit my grandparents there when I was young.

I downloaded The Most Dangerous Thing the other day to my kindle and I've had difficulty putting it down. But real life does have a tendency to get in the way of reading life. Hope to finish either tonight or tomorrow!

I understand the multiple narrators but am slightly confused with the pronoun "we" being used in the "US" section. Unless at some point there is a collective voice that takes over.

I also hope that there will be more Tess Monaghans in the future. I did just pick up The Girl in the Green Raincoat at the Borders sale and hope to get to it soon.

Keep up the good work!

Hello, Laura!

One of my favorite books of yours is, I'd Know You Anywhere, and I was wondering, when you begin a novel, how do you decide point of view? Do you plan it out in advance or do you let the questions that arise while writing the story lead you to the next point of view?

I love how well the secrets unfold through the different narrators!

Cheers!

I'd like to know how you feel about the fact that readers have such instant access to you these days with your website and Facebook. It's not like the "old days" when a reader could write a (real) letter to a writer through their publisher and perhaps receive an answer weeks or months later. Do you find that it's a good thing or a bad thing? Thanks.

I've just started The Most Dangerous Thing and am already wondering if you have lived in a neighborhood like the one in the book. The description is so evocative it's easy to picture and it seems you must have known something like it very well.

I finished Dangerous this morning and went back to my unfinished I'd've Know You Anywhere. It appears that these are two books in a row addressing various aspects of child/youth abuse. It is important. No denial there. Is this going an ongoing theme for you?

Really enjoyed the new book. Had difficulty putting it down.

Apologies about this, folks. I guess we've got our dates screwed up. Laura Lippman will actually be here to answer questions on Thursday. Sorry for the mix-up!

Laura, I'm a huge fan of your Tess Monaghan series, and I can't wait to see you soon at the National Book Festival!

Your Tess books, especially the early ones, are so intricately plotted, and I love that. What mystery authors or series have inspired you the most as a writer? Also, who is your favorite mystery/crime/thriller/suspense author right now?

Thank you! I really admire your work.

I'm going to try to answer a lot of questions in one take and hope that's not poor etiquette here. This date happened to fall on a travel day. But the good news is I have insomnia and am up at 5:30!

Sarah, the collective voice has been hit-and-miss with some readers, but you've pretty much nailed it. I struggled with the decision to explain it, but I happen to believe that there are no singular explanations for some things, that the reader's experience is as important as the writer's intent.

And, yes, I do worry about people thinking this is real, or that is real. The funny thing is -- they always do, no matter how I try to guard against it!

Abby wrote: "Hi Laura,
I've read and enjoyed all of your stand-alone novels, and a thread I notice that runs through the majority of them is that of the fascinating, complicated bonds formed between girls and y..."

I have this theory that a lot of us are "stuck" at a certain age. Mine seems to be 14 or 15. I'm not sure why. Nothing traumatic happened. I was just a very young fourteen, one of the girls who was having a hard time making the leap to dating and boys. I wasn't an out-and-out nerd; like a lot of kids, I found a collegial group of friends in the drama department. But I was very uncool.

About ten years ago, as I watched my friends/peers begin breaking out with seminal books -- Dennis Lehane's Mystic River, George Pelecanos's Hard Revolution -- I began to think about what I knew that the rest of the world didn't. I wrote Every Secret Thing, a novel about two eleven-year-old girls culpable in the death of a baby. I like writing about young people because they haven't mastered guile and they're just beginning, very clumsily, to wrestle with the issue of power in their relationships.

Stacy wrote: "Hello, Laura!

One of my favorite books of yours is, I'd Know You Anywhere, and I was wondering, when you begin a novel, how do you decide point of view? Do you plan it out in advance or do you le..."

The story dictates the POV. In I'd Know You Anywhere, it was critical for people to see how Walter saw himself. But I also felt it was key to see how Elizabeth became Eliza -- and to have two characters with very firm ideas about whether Walter should live or die. Because that's part of what Eliza, the ultimate pleaser, is dealing with. She's just never as certain as other people are, as the last passages of the book denote. Plus, it was important to me that people not read it as a polemic on the death penalty. It's not. If anything, it's an allegory about divorce: What do we owe people simply because we know them? What is intimacy? What are its obligations?

Allegory . . . pretty hifalutin' talk for 6 a.m.

Marjorie wrote: "I'd like to know how you feel about the fact that readers have such instant access to you these days with your website and Facebook. It's not like the "old days" when a reader could write a (real) ..."

For the most part, I like it, but it makes me feel like a big fat failure because there's often an e-mail unanswered, a blog not updated, etc. It's also a little raucous, so I have to make sure I carve out the quiet time necessary to write. And that's tricky when my laptop is the conduit to both those worlds.

RuthG wrote: "I've just started The Most Dangerous Thing and am already wondering if you have lived in a neighborhood like the one in the book. The description is so evocative it's easy to picture and it seems ..."

Dickeyville is very real and I grew up very close to where the Robison house isn't, if that makes sense. Strange to set such a dark book in a place I love so much. If I were in therapy, I'd want to talk about that.

Jan C wrote: "I finished Dangerous this morning and went back to my unfinished I'd've Know You Anywhere. It appears that these are two books in a row addressing various aspects of child/youth abuse. It is import..."

Youth is an ongoing obsession, per the reasons I provided Abby above. I'm writing a book right now that remains in one POV for the entire book and there's very little about her childhood, yet the few glimpses of the character as a teenager are key to understanding how she became the person she is. At the same time, it's fun to write about a character with a really keen intellect and a set of cultural/literary references more in synch with mine. (There are limits in writing 11-year-olds.)

Kim wrote: "Laura, I'm a huge fan of your Tess Monaghan series, and I can't wait to see you soon at the National Book Festival!

Your Tess books, especially the early ones, are so intricately plotted, and I lo..."

One favorite? One? I'm now going to anger all my friends, whom I'll see in a few hours at the annual mystery writers convention. But I'll go out on a limb and pick Kate Atkinson. Her Jackson Brodie books are unlike anything else.

I was a huge fan of James M. Cain and very disappointed that I didn't have as dark/edgy a voice. I also read Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley and Carl Hiaasen in the yeasty years right before I started writing PI fiction. The thing I remember that strikes me funny as now -- I plucked a Paretsky book off the shelf at the library because it was set in Chicago and I was feeling very wistful about Chicago, where I had gone to college. Next thing I knew, I had torn through every single VI Warshawski novel in print at the time. I loved that feeling of finding a series where I just wanted to read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, a general comment: It's gratifying to hear that some have found the book difficult to put down. One disadvantage of being the author is that the pacing is hard to gauge -- because I know what's happening, I'm in control of events. I didn't realize until recently that the book has a very sedate pace. I actually picked up my husband's copy and saw what page he was on and registered a shock, something like: "Page 175 and it's only up to that! Oh my lord!" I wouldn't change anything about it, but books are a lot like life, to paraphrase the philosopher: They must be written forwards, but can only be understood backwards.

Laura - I have not read The Most Dangerous Thing yet. I am currently on my 12th book that you have written. I want to thank you for occupying my downtime, as well as those times when I should not be reading. You are definitely one of my favorite authors. Thanks for your time!

Laura thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with your fans on Facebook, it is so cool to hear directly from the author herself.

TK wrote: "Laura thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with your fans on Facebook, it is so cool to hear directly from the author herself."

Thanks everyone on this thread. Had some technical difficulties once I arrived in St. Louis yesterday, but I think I caught all the questions. Love Goodreads and everyone's passion for books.