Tess, It’s Been A While

It’s been a while since I read a Tess Monaghan mystery by Laura Lippman and I’ve missed them. Long before The Wire, I stumbled upon this series—drawn in by the fact that the main character was a rower and not small and skinny. However, I soon realized that one of the things I loved about this series was the setting. Like most of my favorite mysteries, place is an important character and most of the Tess Monaghan stories are love letters and sometimes hate mail to Baltimore and its residents.

A lot has changed in Tess’s life. She is now the mother to a young daughter, Carla Scout, and as she struggles to balance work and parenthood, it’s clear that she thinks her boyfriend, Crow, is far better at it. However, she feels like parent of the year compared to her new client, Melisandre Harris Dawes, a woman who killed her youngest daughter, was found not-guilty by reason of insanity, and who then fled the country leaving behind her husband and two older daughters. It’s been twelve years and now Melisandre is back to film a documentary and to reconnect with her daughters. Tess and her new partner, Sandy, have been hired as security consultants because Melisandre has been receiving strange, threatening notes. It doesn’t take Tess long to figure out that Melisandre is a piece of work but that doesn’t explain the strange events that keep occurring or the notes that start appearing on Tess’s car.

Unlike many Amazon readers, I enjoyed the parts of the story about Tess and Crow and Carla Scout. I’m not a mom but I think that most parents suffer from the fear that they are doing it wrong and Lippman captures this dynamic vividly. I also found the initial set up of the mystery behind Melisandre’s tragic act to be intriguing and the effect it had on her daughters interesting and sad. However, as the pieces of the plot began to click together, the story felt less effective to me—too many red herrings and a few moves that seemed out of character for people we’ve come to know. For me, the Tess Monaghan novels have never really been about the plot but in Hush, Hush, the twists and turns sometimes got more in the way than they should have and the ending of this fell flat to me. Still, though this wasn’t my favorite visit to Tess Monaghan’s Baltimore, I’m sure I will be back.