Laura Lippman is a good writer. Since she has won just about every major award in crime fiction, and many of the minor ones as well, clearly I am not in the minority in this evaluation. The present work shows that her reputation is well-deserved.
The Girl in the Green Raincoat was originally written as a serial in the New York Times magazine and is now being published as a standalone novella of about 200 pages. Many authors in this situation try to expand their magazine piece to the length of a standard novel. If the original work was good as a short piece, the expansion is rarely successful. It is a credit to the author’s skill and judgment that she chose to leave the story in its original form. The result is a satisfying “small plate” instead of a watered-down full meal.
As the story opens, PI Tess Monaghan is chafing under a restriction to bed rest due to a difficult pregnancy. She misses her usual energetic level of physical activity; she misses sleeping in the same bed as her boyfriend Crowe; and most of all she misses the investigative work that allows her to pursue satisfaction of her insatiable curiosity. Plagued with worry about whether she is really cut out for motherhood and whether she and Crowe will or should marry, clearly she needs a distraction. Tess has been entertaining herself by looking out the window, and as a dog-lover she has especially enjoyed watching a woman walk her dog daily. One day she sees the dog running loose but no woman. What happened to the woman is a puzzle that Tess must solve, and the investigation leads her to suspect she has uncovered a modern Bluebeard.
Tess is a character I have enjoyed since her first appearance in Baltimore Blues. Protagonists in crime novels tend to be either paragons of acumen a la Poirot or Holmes or unbelievably dysfunctional personalities with so many flaws that they tend not to be too credible. By contrast, I can imagine having a friend like Tess Monaghan. I would love her dearly, but I would find her prickly personality very irritating at times. Tess is a real person. Because of the confinement to her couch, Tess uses a number of agents to pursue her investigations or asks involved parties to come see her. Most of these other characters are rather Dickensian, such as Tess’s legman Mrs. Blossom, a senior citizen who visits the suspect’s home wearing a fuchsia trenchcoat and pink high-top Reeboks. With the possible exception of her friend Whitney Talbot, the other characters are fun but not fully developed. Even boyfriend Crowe, who is important to Tess but irrelevant to the main story, is a sketchy character without the background provided by the earlier books. I would consider this more of a flaw in a longer work.
Baltimore, however, is a living character in all the Tess Monaghan tales. No other author so accurately portrays the spirit of Baltimore as Laura Lippman, and The Girl in the Green Raincoat maintains her usual standard, despite its short length. If Tess enjoys the crabcakes at a carryout named Luigi’s, you can be sure that there is a carryout named Luigi’s in the proper neighborhood and its crabcakes are worth ordering.Tess and I both enjoy the same appetizer from The Helmand. Food is a big interest of Tess’s, but the Baltimore verisimilitude goes beyond culinary matters. For example, Tess’s mother works at The National Security Agency, which is a major metro-area employer. The old-time politicians referred to off-the-cuff are real and part of the Baltimore lore.
The Girl in the Green Raincoat is a must-read for Tess Monaghan fans. First-time readers will enjoy this short sample and will want to pick up the novels for a bigger helping.