In an age in which pollsters and media pundits seem to demand snap judgements on even the thorniest issues — are you for or against the mosque at Ground Zero? — the new Laura Lippman novel, “I’d Know You Anywhere” (William Morrrow), revels in complexity and doubt.
Lippman first made a name for herself with a wonderful series of mystery novels featuring Baltimore journalist Tess Monaghan. The books quickly became popular with readers and widely admired by critics in a very crowded field.
Lippman wrote her first seven books while she still held down her day job as a reporter, soaking up the color and controversies in her beloved Baltimore.
Without showing any signs of tiring of Tess and more traditional genre fiction, Lippman left daily journalism behind and began making forays into what the publishing industry calls “stand-alones,” crafting non-Tess stories that were even richer — and, yes, more troubling — than the mystery novels.
“I’d Know You Anywhere” is as engrossing as any page-turning thriller, but in the course of telling her story, the novelist allows a reader the freedom to hash out one of the most troubling contemporary issues — whether or not America should continue to endorse capital punishment.
The book starts by introducing us to a happily married woman, with two children, living in a Washington, D.C. suburb (of course, this being a Laura Lippman novel, the protagonist has deep ties to Baltimore).
Eliza Benedict would appear to have everything going for her, but by the end of chapter one we learn that Eliza went through a living nightmare in her teen years — she was abducted by a serial rapist/killer with whom she was forced to travel for several months. She escaped death for reasons that were not clear to the girl or the authorities.
In the present-day scenes, the perp, Walter Bowman, has long since been captured and convicted and is awaiting the carrying out of his death sentence.
But the man writes to Eliza, hoping to communicate with her again before he is executed.
The novel begins shifting perspective — giving us Walter’s “side” of the story and taking us into the life of an eccentric woman who is desperately trying to re-open communication between the man on death row and Eliza.
Lippman also begins to take us back to the months in 1985 when Eliza was Walter’s captive and he was nearing the end of his crime spree.
“I’d Know You Anywhere” becomes a scary psychological drama as we travel in and out of the minds of the victim and the perpetrator and some of the people around them.
There is a very strong thread of suspense running through the novel — we don’t really find out what Walter and his ally are looking for from Eliza until the final pages. But, Lippman gives us something much bigger than a whodunit or even a “whydunit” like Ruth Rendell’s icy “A Judgement in Stone,” in which the British novelist tells us who the victims and the murderer are in the first sentence.
“I’d Know You Anywhere” is a brilliant, multi-faceted portrait of a culture that can’t make up its mind about the present or the past — and, perhaps, with very good reason.
