The Lost Girls
In Laura Lippman's world, only the dead know whodunit.
Two years ago, novelist Laura Lippman was laughing and joking around with friends on the way to the Washington Nationals' Opening Day game. Then they drove past Wheaton Plaza, a shopping mall in a D.C. suburb, and everybody suddenly stopped talking.
; "TRUE CRIME: Lippman's latest novel, <i>What the Dead Know</i>, is based on a real-life mystery.")
TRUE CRIME: Lippman's latest novel, What the Dead Know, is based on a real-life mystery. Photo By: Jan Cobb (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION) |
Over 30 years ago, two young girls, Sheila and Katherine Lyon, walked to the Wheaton Plaza and never returned home.
"We were in our early teens when the Lyon sisters disappeared," says Lippman. "I think it was the first crime that felt real to us."
Lippman, formerly a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, has spent a career making crime feel real to readers, both in her award-winning Tess Monaghan series, and lately, in a run of scorching stand-alone novels. Lippman's latest, the time-hopping What the Dead Know, draws inspiration from the true-life mystery of the Lyon sisters, but takes us to the places few journalists dare to venture: inside the heads of the victims, their families, and ultimately, the perpetrators.
(Full disclosure: Lippman has graciously lent blurbs to my books, and even interviewed me once for her Web site. I figured turnabout was fair play.)
City Paper: You claim to have a notoriously bad memory, yet you really seem to nail 1975 as well as 1983 and 1989, from music to style ...
Laura Lippman: I'm not sure if my memory is poor, or if I'm just a lot more honest about its limitations. I've noticed that when you argue with someone over memory, the other person becomes very vehement, because you're basically challenging the whole narrative of his or her life. At any rate, I spent about a month at the Enoch Pratt, our central library, reading newspapers and magazines from 1975. Seventeen was particularly helpful. I was better on 1983 and 1989 because I used to keep pretty decent journals.
CP: The Baltimore you describe sounds a lot like Philly: a revitalized downtown, forgotten neighborhoods. What do you think the future has in store for cities like B'Mo and Philly?
LL: I'm worried. I know, as a resident of a downtown neighborhood, I should be cheering for everything that raises my property values, but the fact that a gallery opened two blocks from my house makes me nervous. Meanwhile, we lost a corner grocery. I think we're all better off when neighborhoods are truly heterogeneous — in terms of class, age, race, everything. I don't want downtowns to be come little yuppievilles for those without children — or those who have sent their children off to college. That just lets the school system off the hook.
I want the gallery and the grocery store.
CP: Some novelists have a hard time with stories about bad things happening to kids.
LL: It's not tough for me because I place myself in the point of view of the kids, and I remember childhood as downright noir-ish. I think kids are strangely protective of their parents. I was, at least. If my folks knew half the things that almost happened to me when I was walking home from the bus stop ...
I'm not saying I don't see and empathize with parents' fears. I do. But I never saw childhood as particularly idyllic and just feel I'm telling a real, if heightened, truth about it. And I can never decide if kids today are better prepared, because society is so much more candid, or if they're packed in even more cotton batting than we were, metaphorically.
The fun part was writing about media as it was then — more newspapers, but not the 24-hour news cycle. Can you imagine what would happen if two prepubescent sisters disappeared now?
CP: Oh yeah. Blog posts, CNN crawls ...
LL: And a Law & Order episode within the month.
CP: Your father was a journalist. Did you always know you'd follow in his path?
LL: Pretty early, certainly by the time I headed to Northwestern to major in journalism. I wanted to be a writer and I didn't know any novelists. But I knew my father and his friends; they made a living writing. Also, they played poker, and my dad had lunches free to play handball, and he brought home reams of copy paper. I couldn't see any downside to working at a newspaper.
CP: Do you miss journalism, even a little bit?
LL: No, because I've come to realize what hard work it is, much harder than what I do now. In the past couple of months, I've had cause to do some fact-finding — basic citizen-stuff — and it wore me out. I'd rather make stuff up.
Laura Lippman will read Sat., March 31, 1 p.m., Chester County Books and Music, 975 Paoli Pike, West Chester, 610-696-1661, www.ccbmc.com.
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