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Monday, March 31, 2014

The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman

The end of March sort of crept up on me! It's been a busy, busy reading month but I'm really trying to get some older stuff in the TBR read as well with my TBR Tackle challenge. With time quickly running out and no real gaps in the review schedule this meant that my March pick had to be either something short and sweet or a guaranteed quick read. Having recently finished Laura Lippman's After I'm Gone, it really wasn't a surprise to me that her novella The Girl in the Green Raincoat caught my attention from the shelves. (After I'm Gone has a small guest appearance from Crow and his daughter, after all.)

With just two months to go in her pregnancy, Tess Monaghan finds herself on ordered bed rest. To fill her days she's got a stack of movies and a stack of books to keep her occupied but for the bedridden PI the view out of her window proves to be more enticing. A girl in a green raincoat walking an Italian greyhound, adorned in matching green, catches her attention, appearing day after day walking the dog through the nearby park. But then one afternoon the dog appears sans owner and Tess takes it upon herself to investigate.  

It's Rear Window Laura Lippman style and super fun. Tess uses her investigative skills along with the technology at her fingertips but also relies on the help of those around her (considering she's confined to one room). And of course she begins to uncover a potentially grand murder plot, one that begins years before with the missing woman's husband and his first wife!

The Girl in the Green Raincoat is technically #11 in the Tess Monaghan Series but readers who may be curious about the investigator and her family after meeting Crow in After I'm Gone would have no problem diving in with Girl. (The Girl in the Green Raincoat was earlier printed as a serial in the New York Times. You can check out an excerpt here.)

I have heard that Lippman is working on another Tess Monaghan title so there's plenty of catch up time for anyone who may want to start from the beginning. Here's the series list in order:

Baltimore Blues
Charm City
Butchers Hill
In Big Trouble
The Sugar House
In a Strange City
The Last Place
By a Spider's Thread
No Good Deeds
Another Thing to Fall
The Girl in the Green Raincoat



1 comment:

As the Crowe Flies and Reads said...

I don't read Laura Lippman, and I don't know this title in particular, but I have to say that I'd stop dead in my tracks if I saw a book cover like that in front of me. It's so very arresting!