Another Thing to Fall
This has the feel of a late int he series kind of mystery novel where some of the magic has disappeared, but there’s still a solid core. We also have the clear idea that the narrative is shiftinaway from the main focus and more toward some of the ancillary characters in the series, particularly Lloyd, new star from No Good Deeds.
Tess literally runs aground of a movie set in the middle of the Patapsco river during a rowing set. She is pulled aboard a boat trying to capture a shot. A tv show has come to Baltimore about a contemporary iron worker travelling back in time to the 1800s and getting together with a transplanted English aristocrat. Tess is hired to watch over the rebellious starlet cast as the English lady and she leverages this into an internship for Lloyd who immediately takes a shine to film work, having been Crow’s film disciple for a year now.
The mystery arises when a production assistant is brutally murdered and Tess has to figure out what connection this has to an already doomed-feeling production.
The writer for the show is a kind of wayward Baltimorean son, the son of a famous director gone to seed (think Barry Levinson ish), and there’s a lot of interesting moments talking about the Baltimore film industry ala The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street but while this window-dressing is interesting, it’s mostly decorative. Over all a perfectly ok book, but I think Laura Lippman is chomping at the bit to write non-Tess books.
The Girl in the Green Raincoat
I was confused by this one going in, as I mostly listen to the audiobooks of these novels, because this one is very very short compared to the others. What it turns out is that this one is more of a novella and was originally serialized. Part of the effect of this serialization, as we come to understand it from an endnote Lippman publishes with this book is that she was trying to find a way to allow anyone to join up with the novella at any stage of its publication. I am not so sure that works or not, but here we have it. One of the other effects of all this is the most clear feeling that Lippman is looking for her exit from the series. Not that she really puts Tess in the absolute line of fire, but this could easily be the final book if she wanted it to be.
This book is the Rear Window/Daughter of Time of the Tess Monaghan books, an idea pre-figured in a character’s obsessively detailing a Simpsons episode in the previous novel, but made more clear when Tess thinks about reading Daughter of Time in book and talks about Rear Window. Here, we have Tess very pregnant and experiencing pre-eclampsia and on bedrest as a consequence. She is brought home a small mini pinscher that is thrust into her hands by an erratic woman wearing a green raincoat and this turns into a kind of small mystery for her to solve from her bed. So of course she contracts out the work to Whitney and Ms. Blossom (a new protege figure from a class she taught about detection) to help drive the mystery. In edition to all this, we get a lot of discussion on pregnancy and marriage.
The Bookthing
For those of you who don’t know, Baltimore really is Charm City in a lot of ways, something all these books try hard to press upon the readers. This story fails to really deliver this message by not promoting as clearly as it could one of the most magnificent pieces of evidence. The Baltimore Bookthing is a warehouse-sized Little Free Libaray that’s been community supported for more than 20 years. You can show up and get as many books as you want and take them. It’s not an exchange, there’s no cost, and it’s entirely run by its founder and volunteers. I can’t begin to oversell it because it’s as good as it sounds. It even burned down two years ago and bounced back even stronger than before because of how much support it has. You should go there if you’re driveable.
So this little story involves Tess helping to solve a series of shoplifting thefts at a local bookstore with her young daughter in tow. It mentions and discusses the Book Thing within the story, and delivers a perfectly charming story, but I can’t help but think Tess would be way more gung ho about the Book Thing than she is, or would have opinions that are complicated based on her aunt Kitty owning a book store on her own.
Hush Hush
This most recent and perhaps final Tess novel begins with an interview for a documentary. We are slowly made to understand a terrible event happened some twelve years before, it involved the death of a child and was famous. It turns out that a rich lawyer in the throes of postpartum depression killed her young baby in a horrific and public way, and now is back in Baltimore and funding a documentary, not set to clear her name legally, as she was acquitted by way of insanity, but as a way to clear her name in the public eye. Tess is brought into the mix to help with security and research. She has her daughter with her now, and you can see where we’re headed with this one.
So this book plays around with a few references, not unlike how the previous novel referenced the two mystery novels. There’s a direct reference throughout the book to Medea, as the mom in question feels like this is how she is perceived, but also what she considers naming her documentary about her life. The other more glaring and almost silly reference is to Game of Thrones. The mom who kills her daughter is named Melisandre, named after the red sorceress from the books and the tv show show who famously sacrifices the young daughter of Stannis Bareatheon. The Medea one lands better.
Over all this book feels like there needs to be a long freak from the series.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Another-Thing-Fall-Monaghan-Novel-ebook/dp/B0013TPYXK/ref=sr_1_16?crid=3SWTWM5QO3FAU&keywords=tess+monaghan+series+order&qid=1573387498&sprefix=tess+mo%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-16)