The Most Dangerous Thing

by Laura Lippman Narrated by Linda Emond

Overview

“One of the best novelists around, period.”
-Washington Post

“Lippman has enriched literature as a whole.
-Chicago Sun-Times

One of the most acclaimed novelists in America today, Laura Lippman has greatly expanded the boundaries of mystery fiction and psychological suspense with her Tess Monaghan p.i. series and her New York Times bestselling standalone novels (What the Dead Know, Life Sentences, I'd Know You Anywhere, etc.). With The Most Dangerous Thing, the multiple award winning author-recipient of the Anthony, Edgar®, Shamus, and Agatha Awards, to name but a few-once again demonstrates how storytelling is done to perfection. Set once again in the well-wrought environs of Lippman's beloved Baltimore, it is the shadowy tale of a group of onetime friends forced to confront a dark past they've each tried to bury following the death of one of their number. Rich in the compassion and insight into flawed human nature that has become a Lippman trademark while telling an absolutely gripping story, The Most Dangerous Thing will not be confined by genre restrictions, reaching out instead to captive a wide, diverse audience, from Harlan Coben and Kate Atkinson fans to readers of Jodi Picoult and Kathryn Stockett.

Editorial Reviews

Maureen Corrigan

Lippman vividly summons up the formlessness of summer days of yore, when accidental bands of kids who had nothing much in common but their neighborhood would clump together and ask, "Whaddayawannado?"…Lippman calls The Most Dangerous Thing her "most autobiographical novel…in strict geographical terms," and her precise descriptions of Dickeyville and environs, past and present, make this one of her most poignant books.
—The Washington Post

Marilyn Stasio

A mysterious childhood secret is standard fare in suspense novels, but Lippman keeps this device fresh with a complex narrative structure of shifting timelines and multiple points of view. These changes in perspective allow her to circle the secret in a way that broadens the mystery and deepens the characters…
—The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Childhood playmates can't quite put their past behind them in Lippman's tale of growing up too fast but not at all.

Like the five points of the star Go-Go Halloran can't get the knack of drawing, Go-Go, his brothers Tim and Sean, Gwen and Mickey seem joined even though each points in a different direction. Tomboy Mickey hates school, loves the outdoors and is neglected by her mother, a waitress with a taste for the wrong men. Pudgy Gwen worries that she'll never be attractive, and once she is, worries even more that she'll turn into her beautiful, sad mother Tally. Tim is a bit of a lout, Sean is the perfect gentleman, but neither gets much attention because their hyperkinetic younger brother Gordon, known to everyone in Dickeyville as Go-Go, snatches up every bit of the family's limited resources. Still, the five travel in unprecedented freedom throughout nearby Leakin Park, even though grown-up Gwen would never let her daughter Annabelle spend hours on end out of the sight of any adult. They hike, catch tadpoles and discover a strange man living in a ramshackle cabin in the heart of the park. But their greatest adventure is being together until disaster tears them apart. Years later, Go-Go's funeral reunites them briefly. Mickey has reinvented herself as McKey, a fearless flight attendant. Sean lives in Florida with his quietly domineering wife Vivian. Tim lives nearby with affectionate Arlene and takes care of his widowed mother Doris. But it's Gwen, the journalist, teetering on the brink of her second divorce, who forces them to reexamine their assumptions about their shared and broken bond.

No one explores the delicate interplay between children and the adults they grow into better than Lippman (I'd Know You Anywhere, 2010, etc.).

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173608703
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/23/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged

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