Here at Casa Mysterioso, instead of recycled site-owner publicity, we offer interviews with other people in the arts--writers, musicians, actors, entertainers, and sometimes just plain characters. We add new ones all the time, and site visitors are invited to contribute. If we use your interview, we'll pay $35. Query by e-mail.

Interview with Jan Burke
Interview with Jeremiah Healy
Ben and Diane (An Interview with Stephen Booth)
Cold Days and Deadly Nights (An Interview with Steve Hamilton)
Mysteries (An Interview with Irene Marcuse)
The Stone Monkey (An Interview with Jeff Deaver)
The Salaryman's Wife (An Interview with Sujata Massey)
A Kiss Gone Bad (An Interview with Jeff Abbott)
Charlotte Justice (An Interview with Paula Woods)
Blood Money (An Interview with Rochelle Krich)
Letter From New Orleans: (An interview With Andy J. Forest)
The Lady From Charm City (An Interview with Laura Lippman)
Crescent City Views (An Interview with Anne Rice)

 

The Lady From Charm City
(An Interview with Laura Lippmann)
by Greg Herren

How much of you is in the character of Tess Monaghan?

I tend to see the differences, where others see the similarities. I'll start with the physical resemblance: Tess and I are the same height. At the time I began writing the books, I had short-short hair -- hair so short it was razor-cut in the back -- so giving Tess a long braid was in reaction to my own short hair. I have always been somewhat vague, intentionally so, about her features.Tess is at once harder and leaner than I am, yet more voluptuous.

Her family background could not be more different than mine and her lifelong athleticism is certainly not drawn from my experience. She has a big chip on her shoulder, the consequence of some tough breaks in her 20s. I think Tess is the person I might have been if I had lost my newspaper job in my mid-20s.She is at once angrier and much more vulnerable than I am. Then again,she's a decade younger. (Tess and I started out about five years apart, now it's 11.)

What are some of your favorite books?

"Lolita." Larry McMurty's "All My Friends are Going to Be Strangers." Almost anything by James M. Cain, but particularly "Mildred Pierce," which is much, much better than the film based on it. "Zuckerman Unbound," by Phillip Roth. ("The Ghost Writer" is considered the more perfect work in the Zuckerman books, but this is my favorite.) "Freedomland" by Richard Price. (Again, I think some might argue "Clockers" is a more-perfect book, but Freedomland" touched me in a more permanent way)

I look forward to the novels of JoAnna Trollope and Cathleen Schine.

I am a huge fan of Laurie Colwin and can't help thinking about the books she might have written if she hadn't died in 1992.

I didn't name more writers from the crime genre because I always risk leaving someone out.

Who were some of your influences on your writing?

Truthfully, the books I read as a child did more to inspire my writing than anything else. In particular, I adored "From the Mixed-up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler," a book I tried to rip off repeatedly as an 11-year-old would-be novelist. I also loved the books about the Melendy family, by Elizabeth Enright. If I look closely at my reading, I see I preferred books where children were essentially alone -- orphaned, or with their parents not around that much.

As for mysteries -- three books changed my life in rapid order: Indemnity Only, by Sara Paretsky, because it was the first book I read where the woman was a P.I.; Tourist Season, by Carl Hiaasen, because it was the first wickedly droll crime novel I ever read; and Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley, because it was the first mystery I read about a first case.

Mindful of how this interview came about, I will say I was utterly depressed when I discovered Julie Smith's work because I realized that so much of what I thought was "original" about my work -- the larger-than-life heroine, the attention to setting, the use of third-person POV -- had been done, and done beautifully, in her Skip Langdon books. Luckily, I was through my first draft, or I might have given up.

Why did you decide to write mysteries?

The idea I had for a novel was based on killing someone. It seemed a good place to start.

Has being a journalist been good training for you to write fiction?

It's great training, because it demystifies the writing process. It teaches a writer how to do things in small, manageable pieces. And it broadened my experience considerably, so I had much more to write about.

Baltimore is practically a character in your books. Is that something you deliberately set out to do?

Yes. I love the city, but I often don't know why. It doesn't have a great climate, although I prefer it to Texas, where I lived for much of my 20s, and Chicago, where I went to college. Parts of it are, I suppose, quite ugly, but I tend to think they're beautiful. I love to drive near the working parts of the harbor. And I love the people.

I love the character of Crow. How did you come up with him?

When I started, I was having some sly fun inverting some standard archetypes of the mystery form. Crow was meant to be a sort of Velma character -- I think that's the name of Mickey Spillane's loyal secretary, right? I wanted there to be this near-perfect man who would stay by Tess through thick and thin. Of course, he doesn't, not quite -- he leaves her once, deservedly so.

I love Crow, too, and I'm mystified by readers who don't. What's not to love? He's happy, loyal and always up for an adventure.

Tess is a bulimia survivor. IS this an issue that you have experience with, or feel very strongly about?

I was never bulimic, but so many women I know struggle with body image. I've read too many books where the heroines are tall, thin and ethereal, who can't keep weight on when they're worried or perplexed. I wanted to write about a woman who was more like the women I know.

Why is Tess a rower?

It fits her, don't you think? It's also a discipline that makes her credibly strong.

How much research goes into your books?

As little as possible. I'm being glib, of course. I care a lot about getting things right and, when it comes to Baltmore stuff, I fact-check my novels pretty carefully. It seems to me that writers who don't have a background in journalism find research much more romantic than I do. I don't want to make obvious mistakes, but it's not non-fiction. The test is for a novel to be credible, not true.

Besides, as Donald Westlake once said: "I became a novelist so I could make stuff up!"

Do you have any advice for aspiring mystery writers?

Don't give up. Don't try to out-think the market. Write what you want, because writing a novel must be a labor of love, first and foremost.

Why do you think that women have seemed to have taken over the mystery genre?

They haven't. Women have, however, dominated novel-buying in this country for quite some time, so it's reasonable that they would be drawn to stories with strong female protagonists. But the women readers are awfully open-minded. After all, they're the ones who are helpng to make best-sellers out of Robert B. Parker, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, John Grisham, David Baldacci . . . need I go on? The male crime writer is alive and well. Reports of is demise have been greatly exaggerated.

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