The Girl In The Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman

It's unusual to find a mystery so mediocre that I don't want to finish. This elicited a true lack of interest in both character and plot. I must be missing something as Lippman has written 20 novels, won every major crime writing award. I would place her one notch below Janet Evanovich, a popular author who I don't need to read again. I was shocked to read this is the 11th Tess Monaghan mystery, so these characters have a life before this novel.

Tess Monaghan is a private-eye on doctor ordered bedrest in her third trimester of pregnancy. She is helped by her boyfriend Crow and old friend Whitney as she deals with boredom in her Baltimore apartment, Rear Window-style. Each day she sees a woman in a green raincoat walk her dog. One day the dog is alone, so naturally, Tess believes someone has killed the woman. Her self-created case reveals the woman's husband Don Epstein has been married before; the woman Carole is his third wife. The first wife was killed in a robbery attack, his next girlfriend fell down the stairs to her death, the second wife was also killed. Epstein claims she is on a business trip, but then announces she has drained his bank accounts - yet someone is selling her jewllery on eBay. Tess and friends take the dog in and name him Dempsey.

Tess is an ex-reporter, and uses her connections to discover the second wife and Carole were sisters, or was it the first wife? - a well mixed stew to base a mystery around, but we spend far too much time on Tess, irritable at having to pee all the time; at 35 she is a high risk pregancy enduring preeclampsia, gaining weight, waddling around with her two dogs Esskay and Miata, dealing with the horror of a bedpan. The sidekicks are no more interesting; Crow's young assistant Lloyd walks the dogs, but at the point Tess meets his girlfriend and her two mommies, I had forgotten who he even was; Whitney shops for diaper bags and goes undercover to seduce Epstein for information, ending up within days of meeting him with a declaration of his love.

There is a type of mystery that builds itself around a heroine so wrapped up in her own neuroses she can't work the case, loaded with feminine foibles that are supposed to be humorous or endearing, but coming off as incompetent. I prefer an able, mentally stable heroine, who has her flaws, but not immersed in self-obsessive drama. This mystery hinges on a delusion she is incapable of leaving well enough alone. I guess it is supposed to be 'cute'. At the finale, when all is discovered, the best curse the culprit can utter is "you buttinsky bitch."

This was previously serialized in the New York Times, now published in book form. I found this a non-starter, and despite the short page count, I read two other books in between when I couldn't muster the interest to finish it. Perhaps I picked the wrong book of hers to start with. I have a copy of Sunburn on my TBR shelf, that I can now part with unread.

She has a lot of fans, people say they like her work.

2008 / Tradeback / 158 pages