The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives

LAURA LIPPMAN

Laura Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1959. Her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1965, when her father took a job as an editorial writer for the Sun. It was here that she grew up, a couple of doors down from the Monaghan family, which included three boys and two girls. She went to Northwestern University ’s Medill School of Journalism. Seeking a job as a reporter, she landed a position in Waco, Texas, then another in San Antonio, before moving back to Baltimore, where she was hired by the Evening Sun, which soon merged with the morning paper. She was able to write a book a year about Tess Monaghan, the self-described “accidental private eye,” while working full-time as a Baltimore newspaper reporter, until she retired from that position in 2001.

Laura Lippman has been nominated for virtually every mystery-writing award that exists and has won most of them; she has arguably had more honors per book than any other mystery writer alive, winning the Edgar^®, Anthony, Agatha, Shamus, Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe, and Barry awards. She was also the first genre writer to be recognized by the Maryland Library Association as author of the year. In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, she has written numerous short stories, edited the anthology Baltimore Noir, and produced four stand-alone crime novels: Every Secret Thing (2003), The Power of Three (2005), What the Dead Know (2007), and Life Sentences (2009).