Wilde Lake, by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins, 2016,
352 pages, $26.99)
You are your
county’s first woman state’s attorney, a widow with 8-year-old twins who all
live with your widowed father and the housekeeper who raised you and your
brother in the planned city of Columbia, Maryland. Your brother is 8 years
older and can do no wrong. Your father is the former county state’s attorney
and your brother also went to law school. Your mother died when you were a week
old. So, where is the mystery?
Or, are things
really as they seem? It may take years to put the pieces together.
As a first
grader and our tomboy narrator, you essentially have no friends (for years) because
you have to be smarter and better than everyone else. And you are - but that
does not endear you to others for many years.
Life revolves
around your brother and his covey of friends, both black and white. He is in the
chorus at a new school in the new town of Columbia. He saves a friend’s life
during a fatal fight with a bully and breaks his own arm in doing so, at a high
school graduation party. But he is the hero and your hero for life.
Some of his
friends have become your friends as adults.
But things are
not always as they seem.
Written in the
vein of To Kill a Mockingbird, Wilde Lake
is riveting, even for those who are not familiar with the Wilde Lake
Village street names or architecture. Reliving the olden days of the 1970s is a fun bonus.
Another Stunning Story by Local Best-Selling
Mystery Author!
Columbia’s
favorite author (and Baltimore’s), Laura Lippman, has written another memorable
mystery, her 21st – this time about residents of the Wilde Lake Village in the
city of Columbia, Maryland.
A Waiting List A Mile Long
After being on the Howard
County Public Library’s waiting list for two months and 22 days, I am still
only number 29 on the waiting list of 261! Fortunately, a friend remembered I
wanted to read it and loaned it to me for two days (that’s all it took, though
it is a long read at times, especially if you do not relate to the neighborhood
or the 70s – if you do, Wilde Lake is
a book not to put down).
But Well Worth the Wait
Lippman, a former reporter
for the Baltimore Sun newspaper,
created our favorite ‘accidental PI,’ Tess Monaghan, in several books and also
wrote a few non-Tess books, but Wilde
Lake may well be her best yet.
Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird
The story
rotates around family secrets, teenage secrets, and adult secrets until they
all coalesce quickly at the end of a long book. Like Scout in Mockingbird, we cherish little Lu as she
tries to put two and two together subconsciously and finally computes the answers in adulthood – answers that are an Achilles’ heel, answers that were set in stone long
ago and only recently revealed but answers that we wish were not true.
Unique Technique
Wilde Lake
alternates between the story of Lu as the first woman state’s attorney in
Howard County told in third-person, to reflecting back on her childhood in
first-person narrative. The adult-written chapters are named by month and day
while the child-themed chapters are titled.
Lippman has an uncanny
ability to remember what it is like to be young, to eavesdrop on family
conversations and not understand them all but file them away to add to other
snippets years later. Another Scout.
And the Mystery is. . . .
Fun! You will probably learn
some fascinating facts about the planned city of Columbia, Maryland, and many
more about the village of Wilde Lake – from the street names to Wilde Lake
High, a model “open-school for the nation,” built in 1971. Besides Ms. Lippman, Wilde Lake also
graduated Edward Norton, Academy Award nominee and grandson of Columbia founder, Jim Rouse.
If you remember the 70s, you
will relive your childhood from dial phones to kids walking home alone at
night, to teens drinking if their parents were present.
Go ahead. Put yourself on
the waiting list. You will be glad you did, but if you can’t wait, Wilde Lake is available for purchase all
over Columbia! And beyond.
