In a Strange City

Every year on the 19th January, for the past fifty years an unknown visitor has left three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. When a prospective client asks PI Monaghan to investigate, he refuses, after all, no crime is being committed.

But she does go to the 19th January vigil as an observer. In the freezing darkness she watches as two cloaked figures approach the grave, appear to embrace and then part. The there's a gunshot and one is killed. Tess quickly learns the dead man is not the regular visitor. So who is he? And why was he there? When it turns out that Tess's would-be client had given her a fake name, she know she must try to find him.

Then an old friend from her past surfaces, claiming that the shooting was a homophobic hate crime, and things get even more complicated...

“Laura Lippman continues to push the envelope of modern crime-writing”

Wonderful ... A moving ... feast of a book WASHINGTON POST
If Lippman has her way, Baltimore will be a strange city no longer, but the delight of readers from there to San Diego KIRKUS
Edgar, Shamus, Anthony and Agatha award winner Lippman (Charm City; Butchers Hill; The Sugar House) pays homage to the inventor of the mystery form in this masterly contemporary mystery, set in Baltimore and replete with her trademark dry, sardonic wit ...Lippman shows in this, her sixth novel, that she's indeed deserving of all the kudos she's received PUBLISHERS WEEKLY starred review
One of the most polished and consistently interesting writers of detective fiction today THE ECONOMIST
Lippman is a writing powerhouse USA TODAY
Every time Laura Lippman comes out with a new book, I get chills because I know I am back in the hands of the master. She is simply a brilliant novelist, an unflinching chronicler of life in America right now -- Gillian Flynn
Lippman is the closest writer America has to Ruth Rendell -- Stephen King
Lippman has enriched literature as a whole CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
-- Harlan Coben
Laura Lippman is among the select group of novelists who have invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative, and exciting work -- George Pelecanos

Laura Lippman lives in Baltimore, USA

Every year on the 19th January, for the past fifty years an unknown visitor has left three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. When a prospective client asks PI Monaghan to investigate, he refuses, after all, no crime is being committed.But she does go to the 19th January vigil as an observer. In the freezing darkness she watches as two cloaked figures approach the grave, appear to embrace and then part. The there's a gunshot and one is killed. Tess quickly learns the dead man is not the regular visitor. So who is he? And why was he there? When it turns out that Tess's would-be client had given her a fake name, she know she must try to find him.Then an old friend from her past surfaces, claiming that the shooting was a homophobic hate crime, and things get even more complicated...

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