As I admit somewhat sheepishly below, I hadn't read any of Laura Lippman's work before diving into -- and quickly devouring -- What the Dead Know. My excuse? She writes a series, and because I was late to that party, I felt a bit daunted. If I'm going to read a series, I start at the beginning. While always having another book by an author you love is a wonderful thing, trying to keep up with (or in this case, catch up with) several series can start to feel like a chore, too.Well, I had better steel myself, because I'll be adding Lippman's Tess Monaghan series to that list very soon. I was happy to have this new stand-alone as an entry point to her work, and it certainly won me over. The knock against a lot of crime fiction is that it focuses on plot to the exclusion of character development (as if having something actually happen in a novel is a bad thing), but Lippman easily delivers both, with a page-turning story and rich, deep characters that make you care about the outcome.

The story is that of the Bethany girls, sisters who disappeared without a trace from a shopping mall in suburban Baltimore. Thirty years later, a woman involved in an auto accident reveals a startling fact to police investigating the wreck: She is one of the missing Bethany girls. But is she? It has been long enough that few people remember more than stray facts of the case; the girl's father is dead, their mother lives outside the country, and the woman in question is reluctant to reveal details about her current life that could help corroborate her story.

Lippman came up with the idea for the story after a conversation among friends when driving past a mall where a pair of young sisters actually did disappear. While some details are the same, she really only used that real story as a launching pad. A curious "what if" is inventively spun into an intriguing thriller that is justifiably winning Lippman some of the best reviews -- and sales, as this was her first book to crack the New York Times bestseller list -- of her career.

I'm finally getting around to posting an e-mail exchange we had about the book, her career and her "web-based persona."

TIRBD: You mention in the afterword that the idea for this came during a conversation with friends on your way to a baseball game. Do you get ideas for writing projects like this all the time, and if so, what was it about this one that made it worth carrying through to fruition?

LL: All the time? No, unfortunately. But I try to keep my mind open all the time to inspiration from a variety of sources – the news, my own memories, vague ideas that intrigue me. I keep them in a mental tickler file – a little risky, when one has a memory as porous as mine. I should write things down, somewhere.

In an essay about this book you wrote for the HarperCollins web site, you liken yourself to a folk artist who makes something new from found objects. Do you feel unique in that, or do you see most fiction writers in a similar light? Would it be possible for you to write something where you didn't feel that way during the process?

My expression of the idea might be unique, but I'm sure I can't be alone in the sense that I'm using things that I've all but tripped over. I also know I'm not unique in my desire to be surprised as I write. John Connolly, in a recent blog entry, reminded me of the Robert Frost quote: "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." I may get wistful at times, thinking things might be easier if I planned everything out in advance. But easier doesn't equal better, does it? The mistakes, the cul de sacs – they're all parts of the process.

Back in my reporter days, I once stumbled on a great story by getting horribly lost on some back roads. My process now is just another version of that.

This is the first of your books that I've read (but surely not the last) though I've had good intentions in the past because of the praise for your Tess Monaghan books. I'm always reluctant to start a new series because of the commitment that entails, and so I was glad to learn about this stand-alone which offered a chance to read you with less commitment. That's a long-winded way of leading to this: do you consider those kinds of things when determining what to write next, weighing the desire on the part of fans for another Monaghan book as opposed to the audience expansion that might come from a stand-alone?

I wrote my first stand-alone because I had an idea that couldn't work for the series. It was only after the fact that someone – actually, my current publisher, Lisa Gallagher, who was then the head of marketing for Morrow – mentioned to me this idea that a long-running series can intimidate some readers. Because I've started so many series late, it never occurred to me that people might be put off. In fact, I loved discovering long-running series late because if you really love them, you have so much gorgeous reading ahead.

As for thinking commercially... I don't want to suggest that I'm so precious and insular that I never think about the marketplace, but it's never the first thing I think about. Writing a book a year might seem fast to some, but it's still a year of my life, and I can't spend it with a project that I'm not passionate about. That would be hell on earth.

Local color and detail is very important to this story; was it difficult to strike a balance between making it so site-specific that it might turn off readers from other parts of the country and making it real enough to resonate with those in the area?

I do think about this, and it's tricky. I love Baltimore so much that I find it all fascinating. But it's like cooking with a spice that's not to everyone's taste, and I have to be careful to use it judiciously.

What kind of response have you heard from long-time area residents about the book? Any resentments about digging up the past?

A lot of people remember the case that inspired me and a few have been critical. They don't necessarily recognize the difference between being inspired by something real and writing a thinly veiled version of it. My story, in the end, has very little to do with what happened in real life. One woman asked me point-blank if I used a real story because that would sell more books. To this day, I'm not sure I understand her reasoning. The case isn't well-known enough, outside Maryland, to be of interest to people.

But I have come to understand there is a lot of confusion in our culture about who owns stories. After all, Hollywood pays people money for their true-life stories and laws prohibit criminals from cashing in on stories about their crimes. So can stories be owned? I would say, yes and no. The real-life family, the Lyons, are the only ones entitled to tell their story. But I told a different story. For one thing, my story had a solution. The real-life one is sadly, tragically open-ended. I also created a wholly fictional family, one as different from the Lyons as possible.

You are very candid on your web site and your blog, and your fans seem to appreciate that candor and access. Does that come naturally to you, or is it something you have developed as your career has progressed?

My web-based persona is actually a little calculated. While I am genuinely open and personable, there's very little personal information about me on the web site and blog, and I've allowed some inaccurate information to stand because I don't mind generating some confusion about, say, where I live. I'm also cagey about what I'll call the demographics of my household – it gets out in interviews, but it's not something I volunteer. Am I married? Do I have children? That's not stuff I volunteer. When I was nominated for the Edgar in 2005, I was at Mardi Gras when the news was announced. And I had this very funny, silly photo of me along with – well, I'm not going say who was in the photo with me! Let's just say it was a minor, someone not in the public eye, who sets his MySpace page to private. My young friend was cool with me posting the photo, but I decided he wasn't old enough to give informed consent. So the world never got to see me in my pink wig and newsboy cap. Not a big loss.

There's this wonderful passage by James M. Cain, at the end of an introduction he wrote for The Butterfly, in which he decided to set the record straight about a great variety of things, primarily his literary influences. He concluded: "I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance hauling concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink." My version would be: "I am 48 years old and look like a field hockey player gone slightly to seed. I am registered Democrat. I drink."

And, yes, I'm aware I omitted my weight.

Is your writing different now than it was when you were a full-time reporter? Are your habits different in terms of having more freedom to write when you want rather than needing to do it around a day job?

The big difference is that the novel is now, more or less, the only thing in my head for much of the day. And that's a great thing, not having to compartmentalize work the way I once did.

I wake without an alarm clock and when my work is done for the day, it's done. I was always at a disadvantage in the American workplace because I'm pretty quick and work is, for the most part, a timed event. If you finish early, you get -- more work! My life now is more similar to the open-space high school I attended, in which the reward for working quickly was extra free time. I spend mine at the gym.

Labels: crime fiction, Monday Interview