JUNE 2016 - AudioFile
The tough-minded Louisa (Lu) Brant stumbles down the rabbit hole of her past when she takes on her first case as state’s attorney. Nicole Poole shares the role of Lu with Kathleen McInerney, who portrays Lu as a girl; present and past are told through their alternating narrations. Poole captures Lu’s almost ruthless drive to prove herself in the job her beloved father once held; whereas, in McInerney we hear Lu’s vulnerability, so at odds with her self-image and the competitiveness she exhibits even at a young age. Listeners are drawn in as the two narratives converge and Lu’s present and past collide—with devastating consequences. K.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 03/21/2016
Luisa “Lu” Brant, the heroine of this richly plotted and emotionally devastating standalone from Lippman (Hush, Hush), has been newly elected as state’s attorney of Maryland’s Howard County. She’s back in her hometown of Columbia, where she and her brother, AJ, eight years her senior, were raised by their widowed father, Andrew Jackson Brant, a formidable prosecutor with an Atticus Finch sense of justice and morality. Widowed herself and raising eight-year-old twins, Lu lives in the house where she grew up replete with memories of a mostly friendless childhood spent tagging after AJ or reading. Everything in the Brants’ lives is cleaved into before and after a shocking act of violence on the night of AJ’s high school graduation in 1980. When Lu takes on her first murder case as state’s attorney—a woman is found beaten and strangled in her apartment—she has no idea that the defendant, a mentally unstable drifter, could be connected to a larger pattern of darkness stretching back to her childhood. Lippman plays with the concept of truth and expertly homes in on the question of whether there are some truths we never want to know. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary. (May)
Richmond Times-Dispatch
A heady brew of twisting tale and accelerating introspection, Wilde Lake at once disturbs and delights, as Lippman impels not only her characters but also her readers to question the depth of their understanding of the past…
Chicago Tribune
Ultimately, Wilde Lake is not so much a crime novel that rises to the level of serious literature as serious literature that rises to the level of great crime fiction.
Booklist (starred review)
As shocking secrets are revealed, the reader realizes that nothing and no one can be taken at face value in Lippman’s brainy, witty, socially conscious, and all-consuming inquiry into human nature and our slowly evolving sense of justice and equality...Lippman is an A-list crime writer.
Associated Press Staff
Lippman is an expert at lending a clear-eyed view of the bonds that link people and the truths we tell ourselves to survive the emotional morass of life. She continues this high standard in Wilde Lake.
Tess Gerritsen
Laura Lippman’s stories aren’t just mysteries; they are deeply moving explorations of the human heart. She is quite simply one of the best crime novelists writing today.
Anna Quindlen
I never miss Laura Lippman’s novels.
Washington Post
She’s one of the best novelists around, period.
Mindy Kaling
Laura Lippman is one of my favorite writers. I cannot focus on anything else when I am reading one of her books. Her writing makes me wish I lived a sexier and more violent life.
Library Journal
12/01/2015
Following in her father's footsteps as state's attorney of Howard County, MD, Luisa "Lu" Brant has decided to make her mark by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death. But the case brings back distant memories of her brother's having saved a friend at the expense of another man's life, and she begins to wonder whether as a child she understood the case correctly. The multi-award-winning author acknowledges parallels to the Finch family of To Kill a Mockingbird, adding, "This book was well under way when HarperCollins announced its acquisition of Go Set a Watchman—and it was completed before that novel was published." With a 150,000-copy first printing.
JUNE 2016 - AudioFile
The tough-minded Louisa (Lu) Brant stumbles down the rabbit hole of her past when she takes on her first case as state’s attorney. Nicole Poole shares the role of Lu with Kathleen McInerney, who portrays Lu as a girl; present and past are told through their alternating narrations. Poole captures Lu’s almost ruthless drive to prove herself in the job her beloved father once held; whereas, in McInerney we hear Lu’s vulnerability, so at odds with her self-image and the competitiveness she exhibits even at a young age. Listeners are drawn in as the two narratives converge and Lu’s present and past collide—with devastating consequences. K.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-03-03
Lippman (Hush Hush, 2015, etc.) takes familiar themes to a new locale as she traces a family's journey from raucous Baltimore to the meticulously planned community of Columbia, Maryland. Growing up in green, slightly hippie suburbia has its pluses and minuses for Luisa Brant. She lives in an old stone tavern her father, Andrew Jackson Brant, state's attorney for Howard County, had moved onto a lush double lot for his wife. Adele Brant lived in her dream house for less than a year before she died a week after Luisa's birth. Although she's never quite accepted by her peers, motherless Lu does get to tag along with her brother, AJ, and his multicultural band of friends from Wilde Lake High. AJ leads a charmed life of academic ability, athletic triumph, and artistic talent, and some of these blessings seem to rub off on Luisa. What's hers alone is her raw ambition. Her drive powers her through life's challenges: the death of her young husband, Gabe, the difficulty of raising her twins without him, and her complicated relationship with her father, which grows even thornier after she moves back into her childhood home. It also brings her to what for many would be the pinnacle of her career when she beats her old boss Frederick C. Hollister III and takes her father's old position, becoming the first woman elected state's attorney for Howard County. Her new job pits her almost immediately against Fred in a case that looks like a sure winner. Homeless Rudy Drysdale is accused of breaking into Mary McNally's apartment and killing her. There's forensic evidence, there's an eyewitness, but for Lippman, there's no such thing as a sure thing. Before long, Lu the fierce looks like she may have caught a tiger by the tail. Although she overamps some reveals and shortchanges others, Lippman as always treads the fine line between certainty and amazement.
