No Good Deeds

by Laura Lippman Narrated by Linda Emond

Overview

Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan-first introduced in the classic Baltimore Blues-becomes involved in a complicated investigation that will force her to question her loyalties.

For Tess Monaghan, the unsolved murder of a young federal prosecutor is nothing more than a theoretical problem, one of several cases to be deconstructed in her new gig as a consultant to the local newspaper. But it becomes all too tangible when her boyfriend, Crow, brings home a young street kid who's a juvenile con artist and who doesn't even realize he holds an important key to the sensational homicide.

Tess agrees to protect the boy's identity no matter what, especially when one of his friends is killed in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. But as she soon discovers, her ethical decision to protect him has dire consequences. And with federal agents determined to learn the boy's name at any cost, Tess finds out just how far even official authorities will go to get what they want.

It isn't long before Tess finds herself facing felony charges. To make matters worse, Crow has gone into hiding with his young protégé. So Tess can't deliver the kid to investigators even if she wants to. Now her only recourse is to get to the heart of the sordid and deadly affair while they're all still free...and still breathing.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

The Barnes & Noble Review
This installment of Laura Lippman's saga featuring vivacious Baltimore private investigator Tess Monaghan (By a Spider's Thread, The Last Place, et al.) pits Tess and her big-hearted boyfriend, Edgar "Crow" Ransome, against their most dangerous foe yet: their principles.

After finishing a shift volunteering at an inner-city soup kitchen, Ransome finds one of his car tires slashed and meets smooth-talking con man Lloyd Jupiter, who offers to help fix the flat for a nominal fee. Instead of calling the police on the 16-year-old scam artist, Ransome does the unthinkable and brings Jupiter back to his home, where he feeds him and offers him a bed for the night. When Tess returns home, she and Ransome discover that Jupiter may have information concerning an unsolved case involving the brutal murder of a federal prosecutor months earlier. After vowing not to reveal Jupiter's identity, Tess gives the local newspaper the story and almost immediately becomes Public Enemy No. 1 to a trio of ruthless law enforcement agents for refusing to reveal her source. With Ransome and Jupiter on the run and Tess trying hard to stay out of jail, the motives behind the mysterious murder are slowly uncovered…

Described as an homage to Lippman's favorite Robert B. Parker novel, Early Autumn, this page-turning whodunit is a surprisingly touching story about a kindly stranger teaching a troubled boy what it means to be a man. Fans of Lippman and Parker alike should enjoy this Tess Monaghan adventure. Paul Goat Allen

Kevin Allman

Here, Lippman has pulled off the near-impossible: writing a conventional procedural that still feels fresh. It's impossible not to like the complex, all-too-real Monaghan, a strong, wry detective prone to "derailing my own gravy train." How can you resist a tough cookie who is nonetheless sentimental enough to turn down all work around Valentine's Day, which is to private investigators what April 15 is to accountants?
— The Washington Post

Kirkus Reviews

Trying to save the world one boy at a time buys a world of trouble for private eye Tess Monaghan and her boyfriend Crow. Not content with delivering fresh produce to every soup kitchen in Baltimore, Edgar "Crow" Ransome offers homeless 15-year-old Lloyd Jupiter, whom he suspects of running the old I-don't-know-who-slashed-your-tire-but-for-five-bucks-I'll-help-change-it scam, a bed at the Roland Park bungalow he shares with Tess. The teenager gives Tess the willies, especially since he seems to know something about Gregory Youssef, the assistant U.S. Attorney found dead on the Howard County side of the Patapsco River the day after Thanksgiving. After smashing up Crow's Volvo, Lloyd bolts, but Tess tracks him down and forces him to tell what he knows about Youssef's murder to Marcy Appleton, a young Beacon-Light reporter who deserves a break. How can she know that Youssef's colleague Gabe Dalesio is also looking for a break in the case? Along with Barry Jenkins of the FBI and Mike Collins of the DEA, Gabe will use any threat available to get Tess to name her source-even if outing Lloyd would drastically reduce his shelf life. So while the Feds lean on Tess, Crow hides Lloyd in Delaware, where no one would ever look, counting on Tess's resourcefulness and his own luck to stave off disaster. After Lippman's crossover stint (To the Power of Three, 2005, etc.), Tess is better than ever.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170039364
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/27/2006
Series:	Tess Monaghan Series , #9
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

No Good Deeds

A Tess Monaghan Novel

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By Laura Lippman

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Laura Lippman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060570725

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Chapter One

When I was a kid, my favorite book was Horton Hears a Who, and, like most kids, I wanted to hear it over and over and over again. My indulgent but increasingly frazzled father tried to substitute Horton Hatches the Egg and other Dr. Seuss books, but nothing else would do, although I did permit season-appropriate readings of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. See, I had figured out what Seuss only implied: Those Whos down in Who-ville, the ones who taught the Grinch what Christmas was all about? Clearly they were the same Whos who lived on Horton's flower. That realization made me giddy, a five-year-old deconstructionist, taking the text down to its bones. The word was the word, the Who was the Who. For if the Whos lived on the flower, then it followed that the Grinch and his dog, Max, did, too, which meant that the Grinch was super tiny, and that meant there was no reason to fear him. The Grinch was the size of a dust mite! How much havoc could such a tiny being wreak?

A lot, I know now. A whole lot.

My name is Edgar "Crow" Ransome, and I indirectly caused a young man's murder a few months back. I did some other stuff, too, with far more consciousness, but it'sthis death that haunts me. I carry a newspaper clipping about the shooting in my wallet so I'll be reminded every day -- when I pull out bills for a three-dollar latte or grab my ATM card -- that my world and its villains are tiny, too, but no less lethal for it.

Tiny Town is, in fact, one of Baltimore's many nicknames -- along with Charm City and Mobtown -- and perhaps the most appropriate. Day in, day out, it's one degree of separation here in Smalltimore, an urban Mayberry where everyone knows everyone. Then you read the newspaper and rediscover that there are really two Baltimores. Rich and poor. White and black. Ours. Theirs.

A man was found shot to death in the 2300 block of East Lombard Street late last night. Police arrived at the scene after a neighbor reported hearing a gunshot in the area. Those with information are asked to call . . .

This appeared, as most such items appear, inside the Beacon Light's Local section, part of something called the "City/County Digest." These are the little deaths, as my girlfriend, Tess Monaghan, calls them, the homicides that merit no more than one or two paragraphs. A man was found shot to death in an alley in the 700 block of Stricker Street. . . . A man was killed by shots from a passing car in the 1400 block of East Madison Street. . . . A Southwest Baltimore man was found dead inside his Cadillac Escalade in the 300 block of North Mount. If they have the victim's name, they give it. If there are witnesses or arrests, the fact is noted for the sheer wonder of it. "Witness" is the city's most dangerous occupation these days, homicide's thriving secondary market, if you will. We're down on snitchin' here in Baltimore and have the T-shirts and videos to prove it. Want to know how bad things have gotten? There was a hit ordered on a ten-year-old girl who had the misfortune to see her own father killed.

Here's what is not written, although everyone knows the score: Another young black man has died. He probably deserved it. Drug dealer or drug user. Or maybe just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he should have known better than to hang around a drug corner at that time, right? If you want the courtesy of being presumed innocent in certain Baltimore neighborhoods, you better be unimpeachable, someone clearly, unambiguously cut down in the cross fire. A three-year-old getting his birthday haircut. A ten-year-old playing football. I wish these examples were hypothetical.

I'm not claiming that I was different from anyone else in Baltimore, that I read those paragraphs and wondered about the lives that preceded the deaths. No, I made the same calculations that everyone else did, plotting the city's grid in my head, checking to make sure I wasn't at risk. Shot in a movie theater for telling someone to be quiet? Sure, absolutely, that could happen to me, although there aren't a lot of tough guys in the local art houses. Killed for flipping someone off in traffic? Not my style, but Tess could have died a thousand times over that way. She has a problem with impulse control.

But we're not to be found along East Lombard or Stricker or Mount or any other dubious street, not at 3:00 a.m. Even when I am in those neighborhoods, people leave my ride and me alone. Usually. And it's not because I'm visibly such a nice guy on a do-gooding mission. They don't bother me because I'm not worth the trouble. I'm a red ball walking; kill me and all the resources of the city's homicide division will be brought to bear on the investigation. I'll get more than a paragraph, too.

In fact, I think I'd get almost as much coverage as Gregory Youssef, a federal prosecutor found stabbed to death last year. Perhaps I should carry a clipping of that case, too, for it was really Youssef's death that changed my life, although I didn't know it at the time. But I'm not likely to forget Youssef's death soon. Nobody is.

The hard part would be fitting me into a headline. Artist? Musician? Only for my own amusement these days. Restaurant-bar manager? Doesn't really get the flavor of what I do at the Point, which is a bar, but increasingly a very good music venue as well, thanks to the out-of-town bands I've been recruiting. Scion of a prominent Charlottesville family? Even if I were confident I could pronounce "scion" correctly, I'm more confident that I would never pronounce myself as such. Boyfriend of Tess Monaghan, perhaps Baltimore's best-known private investigator? Um, no thank you. I love her madly, but that's not how I wish to be defined.

Continues...

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Excerpted from No Good Deeds by Laura Lippman Copyright © 2006 by Laura Lippman. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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