Review: Five Fires by Laura Lippman

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 720 KB
• Print Length: 28 pages
• Publisher: Byliner (Oct. 21 2014)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00ODFRFAG

Book Description

Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of What the Dead Know, The Most Dangerous Thing, and most recently, After I'm Gone, delivers a suspenseful short story with an unexpected twist in her Byliner Original, Five Fires.

Everyone in small-town Belleville is talking about a series of mysterious fires disrupting the typically tranquil summer. The authorities attribute them to heat lightning, but some Belleville residents are not so sure…

High-school student Beth, like everyone else in Belleville, has been following the fires – she has plenty of time between her monotonous day job at the deli and solitary nights at home while her mom works late. The fires aren’t the only unusual occurrence – Beth’s old friend Tara, who left town the year before after a scandal, returns with no real explanation. Circumstances only get stranger when Beth unwittingly discovers clues as to what – or who – is the cause of the fires.

About the Author

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001. Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.

Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.

Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995 but continues to freelance for several newspapers, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller.


My Review

A fascinating short story from Laura Lippman.  In Five Fires, Lippman explores the effect that high school football has on small towns. How it effects the residents. And how they react to it. I am a huge fan of Laura Lippman and found this short story extremely well written and thought provoking. It will have to tide me over until Hush Hush...the new Tess book which is due out early next year.