Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

Happy Monday, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Laura Lippman's latest standalone, Wilde Lake.

Lu was raised with a strong moral code and sense of justice. Her childhood in the idyllic community around Wilde Lake is to blame for much of that. That and the fact that she was raised by one of the most well known and beloved State's Attorneys in the history of the county. It's what led her to run for the office herself so many years later. But when she takes on a slam dunk murder case as her first in office, she finds herself forced to reevaluate everything she was raised to believe. 

One of the questions readers face the most is that concerning favorite authors. Who's your favorite author?/Who are some of your favorite authors? It's a tough one even if you allow for more than one answer. And it's one I find my own answer to waffles depending on the day, the month, the season, and my mood. Laura Lippman is definitely up there, though, and a quick run through of posts shows I've featured here on the blog ten times now. Sure there are a slew of other favorites who have been featured eight and nine times - Laura Benedict, Mo Hayder, and Lisa Lutz, to name a few. But it turns out Lippman is the only one who's appeared a whopping ten times AND that's only topped by Stephen King with eleven!

One of the things I love about Lippman's style is that it is quite versatile. She's played with unlikable characters, unreliable characters, dual timelines, and this is on top of her long running series featuring Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. And they're all fabulous reads!

With Wilde Lake, Lippman hasn't deviated in the enjoyment department one bit. But this is the first time I felt like I was unsure how the two parts were going to wrap up in the end. Chapters here alternate between Lu's present day as a newly elected State's Attorney, and written chapters memorializing what at first seems to be Lu's childhood. It turns out this is just part of the case. It was an interesting way for the story to play out and one that I felt kept me on my toes as a reader, leaving me guessing almost all the way to the end.

Lu herself will likely appeal more or less to readers depending on their own personalities. She's strong and competitive and this competitiveness sometimes becomes a bit judgmental and catty on her part. The picture of her as a schoolgirl getting her feelings hurt by a teacher unimpressed by her particular personality was, I thought, a perfect way of gaining some ground in terms of likability. And her strong belief in justice, as handed down by her father, is illustrated time and again throughout the story.

But it's this belief that begins haunting her more and more as the story progresses, paralleled by her father's own fight in this same regard. I most certainly will not ruin the end for you, but if you're curious - or worried - about how things will tie up in the end, have no fear it all becomes clear as the story winds to its end.

Rating: 4/5

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Laura Lippman and her work you can visit her website here. You can also like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.

Purchase Links: HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble