Sunday, November 30, 2014

2014 book 291

Laura Lippman's Hush Hush
The latest in Lippman's long-running Tess Monaghan series is all about MOTHERHOOD, and there is a LOT going on. Tess and her PI partner Sandy are hired by their lawyer friend/uncle to work on security/do some investigating for an old friend of his, Melisandre, who ten years ago was acquitted of murdering her baby daughter on grounds of insanity. Now she is back in Baltimore, filming a documentary and trying to reunite with her other two daughters, who she hasn't seen in a decade. Meanwhile, Tess is dealing with parenting a three-year-old, and is receiving increasingly upsetting notes. I'll say that the story is entertaining and moves along at a good pace, but Melisandre is amazingly unbelievable as a character. Her ridiculous name is the MOST plausible thing about her, which makes this book unsatisfying in a lot of ways. Also, the past secrets that were revealed were not nearly as earth-shattering as I expected, and, again, everything with Melisandre feels a little . . . off. I kind of need to dissect the ending of this with someone else, because I can't decide what I'm supposed to take away from it. B.


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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in February.

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