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In a Strange City
In a Strange City
In a Strange City
Audiobook10 hours

In a Strange City

Written by Laura Lippman

Narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

A Mystery Guild selection, In a Strange City stars PI Tess Monaghan in a chilling thriller. When a murder occurs during the annual visit of a cloaked individual to Edgar Allan Poe's grave, Tess is drawn into unearthing a killer. "Lippman's second Tess Monaghan novel is a perfectly good mystery, but even more, it's an homage to the city of Baltimore."-Booklist
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 13, 2009
ISBN9781440709289
In a Strange City
Author

Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman is a New York Times bestselling novelist. She has been awarded the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. For more information about Laura visit www.lauralippman.com

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Reviews for In a Strange City

Rating: 3.5993975903614457 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

166 ratings12 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Three stars because I liked the literary and library references—including a cameo by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, back when she was head of Baltimore's Pratt Library—but the plot became more tiresome and less plausible as the novel progressed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Yes, this was a mystery, but it was more of a love letter to Baltimore than anything else. Lippman had fun with this one, capitalizing on the Baltimore ties to Edgar Allan Poe, but also highlighting her love for all the quirkiness of the "Tiny Town" she calls home. Unfortunately, I felt like the story suffered a bit because of this and the plot became more than a little convoluted. But I very much enjoyed seeing Baltimore through the author's eyes.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Laura Lippman can write a good mystery.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Synopsis: Baltimore is the city in which Edgar Allen Poe died and is buried. Each year on his birthday the 'Visitor' puts three red roses and a half bottle of cognac on his grave. During this remembrance, however, someone.shoots the Visitor look-alike and Tess witnesses the murder. Although she would like to stay out of it, someone is leaving messages, hints, and threats on her doorstep. Is the murderer after gay guys, the real Visitor, or someone else entirely and how does this tie in to local museums? Tess must answer these questions to save herself and trap a killer.Review: Pretty good...learned some things about Poe and about Baltimore.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    January in Baltimore can only mean one thing – the annual visit to Edgar Allan Poe’s final resting place by the Poe Toaster, an anonymous person, dressed in cape and scarf, who leaves three roses and a half-full bottle of cognac at the grave on Poe’s birthday. PI Tess Monaghan gets embroiled in the tradition when a mysterious man tries to hire her to follow and unmask the Toaster. She declines the job, but winds up investigating when 1) TWO Toasters show up and one is shot, and 2) she receives a cryptic message (along with roses and cognac) giving her clues to the mystery.

    This is a well-crafted mystery with a little literary history thrown in. I will admit that I am a Poe fan, but I haven’t studied much about the man or the Toaster tradition. It was fun to learn a little more about these aspects through the novel. But the key to any mystery is the strength of the plot. Lippman gives us a number of interesting suspects, several inter-related plot twists, and an opposing police detective to keep things interesting and act as a foil or counterpoint to our heroine. Although I did think the plot got a little too complicated, and a few times I felt the story arc lost focus.

    What I really like about the series, though is Tess Monaghan. She’s curious, strong (both mentally and physically), tenacious, cares about her relationships with friends and family, and never relies on a man to get her out of a scrape. In fact, she partners with a couple of equally strong women in this outing. And I really like the very realistic way in which her relationship with Crow is portrayed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    PI Tess Monaghan gets drawn into a mystery involving Baltimore's famous "Poe Toaster", several murders and some possibly priceless "Baltimore-bilia". Cheers to Lippmann for writing with authenticity, involving a flawed and genuine main character, fascinating secondary characters, and an eventual climax that I did not see coming at all. Every Tess Monaghan book encourages me to learn something, as well as be entertained.I highly recommend this whole series.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Here's what is nice about In a Strange City: if you have skipped other books in the Tess Monaghan series, you can get caught up pretty quickly without repetitiveness in this book. When I last left Miss Monaghan in Butchers Hill, her best friend was in Japan, she was kind of seeing Crow, her aunt was jumping from man to man searching for the right relationship and Tess was in business with someone else. Now, Whitney is back from Tokyo, Crow and Tess practically live together (Tess is out of her Aunt's place and in a real house now), her aunt is now dating Tyner and Tess has her own private investigation business (and she still has her greyhound. Yay!). Because Lippman is so smooth at bringing the reader up to speed, I feel like I just stepped out of the room for a minute. My only question - there was no mention of Tess rowing or working out at all. Did the fitness buff drop all that completely? As a private detective, Tess Monaghan is back and this time she has taken on a case quite by accident. A man claiming to have been scammed in an antiques deal wants Tess to take his case. Although Tess refuses, Crow convinces her to check out the man's claims. Through this interaction, Tess ends up witnessing a murder, finding out the would-be client doesn't exist, and then she starts receiving strange gifts and messages at work and then at home. Somehow, she knows, the all of this is connected. She knows someone wants her on the case. She couldn't stay out of it if she tried. Out of sheer curiosity she starts working the case...without a real client to speak of. It all hinges on the mysteriously "Poe Toaster", a unknown man who symbolically has a drink with the ghost of famed author, Edgar Allan Poe, every January 19th.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An enjoyable book that was, unfortunately, weakened by a flawed ending. Lippman deploys an interesting cast of characters and makes good use of location but never really shows her detective detecting rather than responding. The detective no only falls into the murder case she seems to have fallen into its solution.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is the sixth book in the Tess Monahan detective series about a thirty-one year old private investigator in Baltimore.The story is centered around Baltimore aficionados of Edgar Allan Poe, who was born in Boston in 1809 but died in Baltimore in 1849. (It was also in Baltimore that Poe married his 13-year-old cousin.) A little background to this story: Baltimore had a tradition, from 1949 until 2009, of visitations by the so-called “Poe Toaster.” [Lippman’s book was published in 2001.] Every year on Poe’s birthdate, a mysterious person wrapped in a cloak would show up at Poe’s grave in the early hours of the morning and leave three red roses and a partially filled bottle of French cognac. Onlookers also began gathering each year to catch the Poe Toaster in action. But after 2009, the visitations stopped. The Baltimore Sun reported that this year on January 19, 2011, four “toaster wannabes” showed up at the gravesite with the cognac and roses, but none of them matched the appearance of the real toaster. After two years without seeing the real toaster, the Sun reluctantly has concluded that “Maybe the time for nevermore is finally here.”Tess gets caught up in the Poe Toaster mania for a couple of reasons. One is that her boyfriend, Edgar Allan Ransome, or “Crow” (like Raven) was named for the author. Another is that she used to be an English major. And finally, a potential client came to her trying to hire her to “unmask” the Toaster, claiming that he had cheated him in some way and so the client needed to know his identity. Tess rejected the client, but felt pulled toward the case anyway. She and Crow went to join the onlookers on January 19, and two toasters showed up. One was murdered on the scene.As Tess pursues the murder case (even without a client), she gets caught up in Poe stories, and almost gets murdered herself, in a very Poe-like fashion.Evaluation: This isn’t my favorite of the Tess Monaghan stories; I am much more interested in Tess and her friends than in Poe and his. On the other hand, this book has one of my favorite lines of all the books I have read so far. When Tess meets a woman who thinks Tess may be competing for her lover, Lippman writes:"The blonde’s blue-green eyes had a frosty glaze that would have done a doughnut proud."How you feel about this book will probably depend on how much you enjoy finding out about Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Every year in real life a mysterious figure leaves roses and a half bottle of cognac on Edgar Allan Poe's grave in Baltimore. Author Lippman builds a murder mystery around this event, wherein series sleuth Tess Monaghan finds herself in the middle of a most bewilding set of circumstances. Likely to appeal to cozy readers more than fans of more traditionally hard-boiled PIs, but the numerous allusions to Poe, the father of the mystery genre, add a nice note of fun to the affair. KB.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Every year in Baltimore, on the anniversary of the death of Edgar Allen Poe, a mysterious visitor leaves roses and liquor at Poe's grave site. After an odd man tries and fails to hire Tess Monaghan to be there, she goes anyway out of curiosity. TWO visitors show up, and one is shot and killed.And then things get weird.Good book, in a good series.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In a Strange City is the sixth Tess Monaghan mystery from Laura Lippman. In this installment, Lippman makes use of a long-standing Baltimore tradition, the Poe Toaster or Visitor. If by some chance you aren't familiar with the Poe Toaster, he's the individual who shows up at Poe's grave on January 19th each year to leave roses and cognac. Only this year, there's a murder at Poe's grave when the Toaster is supposed to arrive.Tess is not actually employed by anyone, but she begins to investigate who exactly the murder victim is and why he was murdered at Poe's grave site.As with the previous Tess Monaghan books, I listened to this one on audio. However, the difference was a new reader, Laurence Bouvard. It's hard to hear a new voice when you've become accustomed to another voice as that character, but it was especially hard with this recording because Laurence Bouvard sounded like she was about 12. And her voice for Crow sounded pre-pubescent. All I could think of were those old prints that use to be available with various sports stars as little kids. Remember those? This reading simply did not work for me.That being said, the plot of this caper was fantastic. I'm especially drawn to plots that weave in the classics. The Poe connection in Entombed was actually what got me started reading Linda Fairstein. Poe is a fascinating person from history, and Lippman did an excellent job of taking advantage of that Baltimore connection in this novel. And there is also the connection to Crow, who's real name is Edgar, and who's nickname evolved from Poe's The Raven poem.And of course, I loved Lippman's treatment of the magic of this Baltimore ritual. The magic that almost mirrors that of Santa Claus. Everyone has the right to enjoy this ritual. And that belief sharply contrasts the covetous antagonists in the novel.You have to pay attention in this novel because there is an intricate weaving of villains, but the investment is well worth it when the woven web catches it prey. The plot is fun, the characters are true to form - with a few new additions, and there's always a smattering of chuckles throughout.