Laura Lippman, interviewed by S.J. Rozan

Over the years, the NorCal East Bay chapter of Mystery Readers International has had many "At Homes" -- intimate evenings with favorite mystery writers. We've hosted Anne Perry, Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Elizabeth George, Janet LaPierre, Sharan Newman, Laurie King, Rochelle Krich, Carolyn Hart, James Ellroy, Steven Saylor, Janet Evanovich, Eddie Muller, Taffy Cannon, and many others. These events are held in private homes, and they're similar to Literary Salons. Since so many of our cyber members and friends aren't able to attend these intimate evenings, I thought it would be fun to have a "visiting" author each month interviewed by another "visiting" author. This month we feature Laura Lippman interviewed by S.J. Rozan. Laura Lippman was born in Atlanta, Ga., but spent most of her childhood in Baltimore, Md., where her award-winning Tess Monaghan series is set. Laura followed her father, an editorial writer at the Baltimore Sun, into journalism, attending Northwestern University's Medill School. She began her career at the Waco, Texas, Tribune-Herald, and also worked for the San Antonio Light before moving back to her hometown in 1989. Laura wrote news and feature stories for the Baltimore Sun and Evening Sun, developing the character of Tess -- a laid-off newspaper reporter-turned-private eye -- in her spare time. Laura's first book, Baltimore Blues, came out in 1997 and was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First Novel. Only eight months later, Avon Books published Laura's second novel, Charm City, winner of the Edgar and Shamus awards. Laura's amazing winning streak has continued ever since -- she won the Agatha and Anthony awards for Butchers Hill, and the Anthony and Shamus awards for In Big Trouble. Laura is now writing fiction full-time; in her most recent mystery, 2002's The Last Place, Tess investigates a series of unsolved homicides. "The Last Place is the first place readers should turn to for a superior story," raved the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. Her next novel, a stand-alone called Every Secret Thing, will be published in September 2003. --Janet Rudolph

S.J. Rozan: Your reputation rests on the Tess Monaghan series -- until now. Your new book, Every Secret Thing, is completely different: tell us about it.

Laura Lippman: I wanted to see if I could find a way to make readers empathize with someone they might otherwise demonize. There had been this rash of shocking crimes in the United States and abroad, with children as young as 10 killing other children. But they're still children, right? And there's a reason the juvenile justice system was designed to protect the anonymity of young perpetrators. We believed, at one time, that children were different from hardened adult criminals -- capable of change, and deserving of second chances. Those protections have been eroded to the point where it's possible to pick up a newspaper and see a photograph of an 11-year-old on trial. That blows my mind. We either have to have childhood for everyone, or childhood for no one. But, as it often happens in this country, we have a two-tier system. And those who are losing the privileged status of childhood tend to be minorities, or poor. Or residents of Florida. I have never seen a state that likes to try young people as adults with the same zeal as Florida.

I also was interested in how random events can collide, leading to tragedy. The characters in Every Secret Thing are, for the most part, well-intentioned. Certainly, almost everything that goes wrong can be traced to seemingly innocuous acts. There are no grand conspiracies, no mad genius serial killers, just a lot of people muddling through.

SJR: Was the writing process different? Did the book take longer, was it any more (or less) developed/outlined when you started, did you spend more (or fewer) hours a day, or total time, on it?

LL: It took about the same amount of time and I had the same sketchy outline that I usually have when I start a Tess book, with lots and lots of gaps to be filled in. In some ways, writing in multiple POV made it easier because it makes for an almost cinematic style, as in: Well, I have no idea what this character is doing now or why, so let's go check in and see what this other character is thinking about. I think it made me a better storyteller, a little more fluid and free.

SJR: Were you able to get as close to the new characters as you obviously feel to Tess?

LL: Closer in some ways because no one will ever guess what bits are autobiographical, so I really let loose. I'll give one away. Late in the book, an inarticulate teen-age girl, Ronnie Fuller, thinks about a magnetic alphabet she had as a child. The letters were divided into color groups -- A through F, for example, was light blue. Well, I had an elaborate narrative developed for this color-coded alphabet, as if they were a series of warring religious sects. (I also had a similar narrative for M&M's.) I gave this story to Ronnie and it made me feel closer to her. Virtually every character in the book has an anecdote or possession taken from my life. Some have more than one. Interestingly, they tend to be the most hateful characters in the book.

SJR: Do you have any sense of how your readers will receive Every Secret Thing?

LL: No, and it's nerve-wracking. Early readers have been enthusiastic. But it's possible to lose sight of the fact that the sentiments expressed are not mine, but my characters. And their thoughts are not always particularly enlightened, far from it. The characters' innermost thoughts on race and racism have made some readers squeamish. What can I say, other than the fact that I believe that a lot of well-meaning people harbor attitudes of which they're not aware. The single most important sentence in the book is uttered by the manager at a bagel store: "You hated the people who were different from you as a group, but you hated the people like you one by one."

SJR: As a reporter your job was to find the facts. As a fiction writer your job is to make them up convincingly. Jayson Blair aside, how really different are those jobs and how are they different?

LL: They really are two different jobs and the infuriating thing about the Jayson Blairs and the Stephen Glasses of the world is that they're such cheats, producing work that's neither fish nor fowl. It's not journalism because it's made up, but it's not good fiction, either. It's a reasonable facsimile of journalism, contrived to fool people, nothing more. It's... oleo!

That said, most newspaper journalism is not written in a narrative style. I had an opportunity to do more narrative stories than many writers, but I still did a lot of inverted pyramid/police said/the City Council voted yesterday kind of stories. You spend your journalism career knowing that your story can be bitten from the bottom. It makes you a little jumpy about endings.

SJR: Related to that, how does your training as a reporter help or hinder your fiction writing?

LL: It helps me enormously because it instilled the habit of meeting deadlines and writing daily. It also keeps me from romanticizing research, which makes me more efficient. A little research goes a long way, in my experience.

SJR: When you decided to write fiction, why did you choose crime fiction?

LL: Because I loved it, because it centered on strong, compelling stories and because I didn't want to stick the world with another poor, pitiful me first novel about a sensitive soul with a bruised psyche.

SJR: As a writer, what have you not done yet that you'd like a chance to do?

LL: Everything! Seriously, I'd like to be one of those writers who tries every form, every genre. Someone like Jane Smiley or Madison Smartt Bell (who hired me to teach at Goucher, in interest of full disclosure). I would like to have a brain that big. But I sometimes fear that I'm closer to Pooh, the bear of little brain. See honey, get honey, get stung by bees, repeat.

I think I'll always write about crime. It's just such a good window on the world.

SJR: What are you working on now?

LL: Another Tess. In an ideal world, I'd like to go one-on, one-off. I think it would be good for the series, good for Tess and good for me.

SJR: What is it about Baltimore? This is really a 2-part question: what about Baltimore do you want people to "get"; and why is so much fiction and film about Baltimore so dark?

LL: I don't know that I want people to get anything about Baltimore other than the fact that I love it. Which, I admit, does beg explanation. It's not an obvious city to love, in some ways. But I love it so much. I love what I overhear on the streets -- "I have a goddamn fetish for fried chicken" or "Have to do? Have to do? The only thing I have to do is stay black, pay my taxes and die." Or the man at the soup kitchen, who told me his name was "Quick." "But that's a nickname, right? You weren't named Quick when you were born." "That's right," he said. "Then, I was known as Very Fast."

But why showcase the crime, the grime? I think it's a weird kind of humility because I know those of us who promote Baltimore's dark side -- that list would have to include me, John Waters and David Simon -- have immense affection for the city and know its nicer precincts very well. Yet we don't want to be boastful about it. Plus, the city's problems are large and overwhelming. To ignore them completely would seem disingenuous.

Or maybe it's just that we don't want anyone else to move here, lest the housiing prices go up. It's still one of the best bargains between D.C. and Boston.

SJR: Read any good books lately?

LL: Many. But I'll spotlight Meg Wolitzer's The Wife, a succinct little novel about a woman married to a famous novelist. Wolitzer has always been good. But is there anything more exciting than seeing a good novelist top her own game? This book is so tight, and it has so many wonderful lines that I gave up trying to read them aloud to everyone.

Archived At Home Online Interviews:
Track 1:
Val McDermid, interviewed by Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin, interviewed by Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson, interviewed by Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly, interviewed by Laurie R. King
Laurie R. King, interviewed by Dana Stabenow
Dana Stabenow, interviewed by Jan Burke
Jan Burke, interviewed by T. Jefferson Parker
T. Jefferson Parker, interviewed by Harlan Coben
Harlan Coben, interviewed by Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman, interviewed by S.J. Rozan
S.J. Rozan, interviewed by Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong, interviewed by Cara Black
Cara Black, interviewed by Peter Lovesey
Peter Lovesey, interviewed by Anne Perry
Anne Perry, interviewed by Carole Nelson Douglas
Carole Nelson Douglas, interviewed by Nancy Pickard
Nancy Pickard, interviewed by Carolyn Hart

Track 2:
Ken Bruen, interviewed by Reed Farrel Coleman
Reed Farrel Coleman, interviewed by Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott, interviewed by Theresa Schwegel
Theresa Schwegel, interviewed by Michael Koryta
Michael Koryta, interviewed by Steve Hamilton

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