Laura Lippman, "Lady in the Lake"

Laura Lippman discusses her novel, "Lady in the Lake", at Politics and Prose.

In her latest stand-alone mystery, Lippman, author of the iconic Tess Monaghan series and one of crime fiction’s most decorated writers, returns to her Baltimore beat for a book that’s as much a compelling character study as it is a riveting thriller. Set in 1966, the story follows Maddie Schwartz as she leaves her marriage in search of a more fulfilling life. She seems to find one when she locates a missing girl and takes a job on the local paper. But her next assignment—investigating the death of an African-American woman—leads her into unforeseen complications, many related to blind spots in her own character.

Lippman is in conversation with Neely Tucker, Washington Post staff writer and author of Only the Hunted Run; Murder, D.C.; and The Ways of the Dead.

Since Laura Lippman's debut in 1997, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the "essential" crime writers of the last 100 years. Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her family.

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Produced by Tom Warren