The Sugar House: A Tess Monaghan Mystery
If you haven't encountered Tess Monaghan, the strong-willed former  reporter turned PI who stars in Laura Lippman's increasingly popular series, it  may be because this is her first appearance in hardcover. But this deftly  plotted mystery may change all that and bring Lippman, herself a Baltimore  journalist, and Tess, her curious and likable heroine, the attention they  deserve. When Tess's dad asks her to do a favor for a friend, Tess gets involved  in tracking down the identity of a nameless girl whose killer, the friend's  brother, was murdered himself shortly after he went to prison for the crime. Her  search leads Tess in and out of parts of the Atlantic coast that tourists, and  many natives, never see: to a clinic for the rich, young and anorexic on  Maryland's Eastern Shore; to the Philadelphia Main Line; and inside the corrupt  and clandestine corners of the Maryland state capitol in Annapolis. The more  Tess learns, the more questions she has, and the most important ones have to do  with her father's involvement in the mystery of the anonymous victim and how she  died.The subtext of this well-written, richly rendered thriller is Tess's  confrontation with her own values and her struggle to accept her father's  compromises with his. There's also a sexy love story with Tess's boyfriend,  who's nearly too good to be true, and a lively gal pal, the wealthy and loyal  Whitney, whose own talents are equally impressive. The author is good at  developing multidimensional characters, the minor ones as well as the majors.   And once your appetite is whetted byThe Sugar House, you'll want to  track down Tess's earlier adventures in Lippman's (paper) backlist, beginning  withBaltimore Blues. --Jane Adams--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.