Laura Lippman on her mystery novels, crime and Tess Monaghan, P. I

Bestselling novelist Laura Lippman talks about her time as a reporter at the Baltimore Sun, her Tess Monaghan detective stories, and her latest standalone, Life She started with Tess, a broadshouldered, foodloving former reporter turned private investigator, who is the protagonist in ten of Lippman s books. But Lippman also does what she calls crosstraining, writing short stories and standalones, like Every Secret Thing, What the Dead Know and her recent book, called Life Sentences, about a memoirist who returns to Baltimore to write a book about one of her elementary school classmates involved in a longago crime. She s won most of mystery writers prestigious awards the Agatha, the Quill, Nero Wolfe, the Edgar, Anthony, Gumshoe and the Shamus. And she s taken crime writing beyond genre to cross over into the New York Times bestseller list. The Washington Post says Lippman is one of the best novelists aroun