I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE, by Laura Lippman

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


22 years ago, Eliza Benedict became briefly famous as the only one of serial killer Walter Bowman's victims to survive. Now, Bowman has contacted Eliza through an intermediary and says he wants to meet her. Laura Lippman deftly sets up this chilling premise within the first few pages, and the rest of the book is a steady, inexorable tightening of the tension towards Eliza's confrontation with the man who so irrevocably altered her life.

The premise of a serial killer manipulating someone from inside prison walls inevitably invites a comparison to Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter books. But quiet, apparently contrite Walter manages to be creepy in a much more subtle and ultimately more disturbing way that the more lurid fictional serial killers. I can put down Harris and breathe easy in the belief knowing a real criminal super-genius like Lecter doesn't exist outside of fiction; I know Walter Bowmans exist in the real world.

Which brings us to another great thing about this book, and about Laura Lippman's work in general: her mastery of the small, mundane details of modern American middle-class suburban life and how she juxtaposes the everyday with the horribly out-of-joint to make the evil seem even more unsettling. Stephen King does this a lot as well, but unlike King, you can always depend on Laura Lippman to bring things to a satisfying ending.

Superb craftsmanship, characters you can believe, steadily building suspense and a great ending...yep, it's a Laura Lippman book all right, and one of her best.

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Thugs and Ho's: The Oil Companies Fight For Their Tax Subsidies

Latest Newspaper Column: The Pilot

I think it’s safe to say that no one really likes big oil companies.

Certainly not the people who glumly watch the total on the gas pump go higher and higher as they fill their tanks, the numbers increasing so fast they seem to blur.

Certainly not the people of America’s Gulf Coast who are still suffering from the effects of the largest oil spill in U.S. history, a disaster of biblical proportions that was highlighted by a top oil executive whining that “he wanted his life back” and a Republican congressman from Texas apologizing to BP because he felt the government was being mean and hurting their delicate feelings.

So it’s always been a source of puzzlement to me that more people aren’t teed off at the massive tax subsidies our government gives to these corporate behemoths, especially in this deficit-obsessed era.

Even though the big five oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell — made a total profit of nearly $1 trillion over the past decade, oil companies continue to receive a variety of tax breaks for such arcane things as “intangible drilling costs,” “marginal well production” and “percentage depletion allowance.”

Some of these date back to 1916, when the government was trying to get the fledgling auto and oil industries off the ground and gain wide acceptance for the automobile as the primary mode of transport. I think we can safely say mission accomplished. But the tax subsidies remain.

President Obama has proposed, and Senate Democrats held hearings this past week on, proposals to eliminate $46.2 billion in oil and gas tax breaks over the next 10 years. Of course, the oil companies weren’t going to take that lying down. Spokesmen for the oil industry and the Republican caucus (as if there’s much difference) immediately claimed that repealing the tax breaks would lead to higher prices at the pump.

One of those making the claim, it should be noted, was a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, who’d previously claimed he was “open” to the idea of doing away with the tax breaks. An executive from ConocoPhillips (which reported $95.32 billion in profits in 2010) went further: He called ending the tax breaks “un-American.”

Well, from his perspective, he’s right. After all, in his America, there’s nothing more patriotic than giving a bloated multinational corporation anything they want anytime they stamp their feet and pout, as long as we can make up the difference by cutting aid to the poor and destroying Medicare. From where he sits, that’s as American as apple pie and baseball. To these people, America and its government exists to serve them.

Here’s another thing. I am sick to death of these bloated tycoons holding a gun to the economy’s head every time it looks like they’re going to have to pay their fair share or clean up their mess. “Nice gas price you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.”

I mean, really. Is anyone really stupid enough to believe that oil companies are going to stop drilling if they don’t get a massive tax subsidy for doing so?

I suppose there is one group who actually likes the oil companies: the people who work for them. Unfortunately, that includes a sizable chunk of our Congress, including DINOS (Democrats in Name Only) from oil-producing states, such as Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu (who’s taken $3 million from oil and gas companies) and Alaska’s Mark Begich (who’s only prostituted himself to the tune of $140,000, but he’s still pretty new to the game).

They, too, are acting as if they expect us to believe that the oil companies will just take their multibillion-dollar ball and go home if they don’t get their tax subsidies. Of course, they may not actually like Big Oil; but they sure do smile pretty and say the things their oily “clients” like to hear.

Will the Republicans and a couple of turncoat DINOs manage to derail the president’s attempt to get the oil companies to pay a reasonable amount of taxes on hundred of billions of dollars in profits?

Sad to say, it’s entirely possible. Because to them, the deficit’s big enough to justify balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and the old, but there’s no deficit, ever, big enough to justify inconveniencing their corporate masters.

Ahh, There We Go... Kindle Version of BREAKING COVER Is Now Live

Right here....

In case you'd forgotten, Bill Ott from Booklist had this to say:

Rhoades takes a break from his Keller series, featuring the Gulf War–haunted bounty hunter (Safe and Sound, 2007), with a stand-alone thriller starring rogue FBI agent Tony Wolf. Forced to break cover after rescuing two abducted children, Wolf—officially dead but living under the radar in rural North Carolina—suddenly finds himself on the run from both his former colleagues in the bureau (including his wife) and, more seriously, from the gang of drug-dealing bikers he infiltrated in his last FBI assignment. Tired of running from trouble, Wolf decides to go on the offense: take down the bikers, and expose the mole in the FBI power structure who is feeding the bikers information. If thriller fans are thinking Lee Child here, they’re right on target. Like Child, Rhoades dishes out one airtight action scene after another, mixing in just enough character-building moments and holding our interest in a full cast of nicely developed supporting players. All that, and a Sam Peckinpah–like bloody, bravura finale that will leave even icy-veined thriller fans panting for breath.

Review: THE GIRL IN THE GREEN RAINCOAT, Laura Lippman

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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Why You Might Consider Buying a Nook Today

Because my critically acclaimed title BREAKING COVER is now available for Nook. (The Kindle version is loaded but not yet up on the Amazon site.)

Here's what Paul Goat Allen of the Chicago Tribune had to say about the print version:

After penning three "redneck noir" novels featuring North Carolina bail bondsman Jack Keller, J.D. Rhoades has written a stand-alone story that could quite possibly be the perfectly crafted hard-edged thriller. With a plot that features a rogue undercover FBI agent, a sadistic outlaw motorcycle gang that controls a network of backwoods meth labs and a harem of hillbilly strippers, an overly ambitious female television reporter, and a much-publicized kidnapping case involving two young brothers, what more could a discerning crime fiction reader hope for?

"Breaking Cover" is nothing short of masterful on numerous levels: Rhoades' singular ability to make every character—even peripheral ones—unique, realistic and intriguing; his innate sense of narrative tempo, which is pedal-to-the-metal throughout thanks in no small part to a staccato writing style and succinct chapters all ending with cliffhangers of varying degrees; and, lastly, the author's over-the-top, pulp fiction-inspired audaciousness, which will have readers saying to themselves, "I can't believe that just happened...."

Simply put, "Breaking Cover" is destined to become a crime fiction cult classic—leather biker jacket, submachine gun and crystal meth not included.

Osama bin Laden is Dead: What Now?

Latest Newspaper Column

A good person does not rejoice in the death of another human being. A good person doesn’t hear that another living, breathing soul, one created by the maker of all things, has been gunned down and feel happy about the news.

Guess I’m just a bad person, then.

When I heard the news that Osama bin Laden had been shot and killed by U.S. Navy SEALs, I didn’t exactly go out and dance in the street. It was late, I was tired, and it would have been kind of weird to do it all by myself. I know for sure it would have freaked out the dog.

But I did pour myself a large celebratory drink, sit down, and smile a smile of pure satisfaction.

Truth be told, my revenge fantasies since Sept. 11, 2001, have not involved Osama bin Laden being blown away. They’ve been of him sitting alone in a clear plastic cage, like Magneto in the X-men movie, surrounded by pictures and constantly playing videos of the people whose deaths he orchestrated and their families, constantly confronted with the human cost of what he’d done for the rest of a long, miserable life.

But I knew that would probably never happen. I don’t even know where you’d go to get a cell like that. So as second choices go, this one will do just fine.

I can’t help it. I still remember, as if it was yesterday: the shock, the fear, the anxiety of that pretty September day when I heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, followed by the news of the plane that crashed as its passengers tried to take it back from the terrorists to keep it from becoming another flying bomb.

We all felt it, and we’ve all felt that anxiety and that sense of creeping paranoia every day since. It’s made a lot of us a little bit nuts. It’s made a few of us really nuts. That one incident united us, then it divided us, and I don’t know how long it will be before we’re really whole again.

My children grew up in a world afraid of its own shadow because of that son of a bitch, and while his death will not spell the end of terrorism, I can’t help but be happy he’s been paid back for that.

So what now? Will the death of the man who’s been the dark and beardy face of terror bring us together just as the original attacks did, albeit all too briefly? Will the slaying of this particular dragon start a national healing process?

Well, maybe.

I was encouraged by the fact that even Dick Cheney, who’s previously made thoroughly obnoxious pronouncements that he didn’t think President Obama actually believed we were at war with terrorists, had nothing but praise for the “people who worked very very hard for a long time,” then went on to say, “It’s also a good day for the administration. President Obama and his national security team acted on the intelligence when it came in and they deserve a lot of credit too.”

Former President George W. Bush also was very gracious, acknowledging President Obama’s “courtesy call” to him before the announcement. So credit goes right back to them as well. In their honor there’ll be a two-week moratorium on calling Mr. Bush “Dubbya” and on “shooting in the face” jokes.

On the other hand, a person on Twitter who identified himself as the founder of the “NYC Tea Party” couldn’t bring himself to celebrate the moment without a bitter jab at the commander in chief who was announcing the success of the operation: “I can literally see Obama’s eyes moving back and forth reading the teleprompter. Cheapens this historic moment.”

Meanwhile, commenters at the right-wing site RedState were confident that the whole thing was orchestrated to take people’s minds off examining Obama’s birth certificate. Is that some tunnel vision or what?

So we’ll see. Haters are gonna hate, no matter what. This, however, is a time when the vast majority of Americans want to greet this as good news, as evidenced by the celebrations at the White House, Times Square and ground zero. Maybe this time, the haters, sore losers and conspiracy theorists will find themselves marginalized and, for once, shunned by the people who direct the media spotlight.

We live in hope.