Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Review: THE GIRL IN THE GREEN RAINCOAT, Laura Lippman

The Girl in the Green Raincoat (Tess Monaghan Series #11)The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Laura Lippman's wonderful PI character Tess Monaghan finds herself confined to her bed on doctors' orders due to unexpected complications of her pregnancy. What happens next is right out of REAR WINDOW: a woman who Tess is used to seeing out her window every day disappears, leaving her neurotic Italian greyhound running free. Tess resolves to solve the mystery from her sickbed, all the while dealing with the abandoned canine, worrying about the impending delivery and terrified at the prospect of being a mother.

What's so striking about this book is its compactness: it's only 158 pages, but there's a full, rich, multi-textured story told in that short time. THE GIRL IN THE GREEN RAINCOAT originally ran as a serialized novel in the New York Times magazine, and every chapter is a perfectly crafted, self-contained little gem. As so often happens with a Laura Lippman book, I put it down at the end and went "Wow. That was AMAZING." I loved this book.



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