Laura Lippman

For 13 years, Baltimore's Laura Lippman, creator of the Tess Monaghan private-eye series, has shown mystery fans that high-caliber writing is more potent than full-bore gunplay. But a new wave of media interest, and the release Tuesday of her most ambitious nonseries novel yet — the harrowing, impassioned "I'd Know You Anywhere" — suggest that Lippman, 51, is on the verge of breaking out to bigger audiences as a master storyteller, not just a master of her genre. If it all comes through, her work will soon be ubiquitous.

The pungent, haunting narrative of Laura Lippman's new novel, "The Most Dangerous Thing," kicks in with a group of kids arguing for dibs on a grassy kickball field near a cotton mill on "Wetheredsville Road. " The whole scene sounds like a cozy nostalgia trip. But that patch of grass really does exist - in Charm City, no less - in isolated, rustic Dickeyville. Lippman grew up there, and "The Most Dangerous Thing" is full of vivid backgrounds and behavior - some factual, some imagined - pulled from or inspired by the youth she spent in this improbable neighborhood on the western edge of Baltimore.

The pungent, haunting narrative of Laura Lippman's new novel, "The Most Dangerous Thing," kicks in with a group of kids arguing for dibs on a grassy kickball field near a cotton mill on "Wetheredsville Road. " The whole scene sounds like a cozy nostalgia trip. But that patch of grass really does exist - in Charm City, no less - in isolated, rustic Dickeyville. Lippman grew up there, and "The Most Dangerous Thing" is full of vivid backgrounds and behavior - some factual, some imagined - pulled from or inspired by the youth she spent in this improbable neighborhood on the western edge of Baltimore.

For 13 years, Baltimore's Laura Lippman, creator of the Tess Monaghan private-eye series, has shown mystery fans that high-caliber writing is more potent than full-bore gunplay. But a new wave of media interest, and the release Tuesday of her most ambitious nonseries novel yet — the harrowing, impassioned "I'd Know You Anywhere" — suggest that Lippman, 51, is on the verge of breaking out to bigger audiences as a master storyteller, not just a master of her genre. If it all comes through, her work will soon be ubiquitous.

Laura Lippman was just on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, promoting her new book, Life Sentences. Ferguson asked if she sees much of another famous Baltimorean, John Waters. "Yeah, well, I'll tell the story because it was outed in the newspaper," she said. "We tried to keep it secret. John Waters was my minister. He married us." "Us" being Lippman and Wire creator David Simon. Ferguson needed a moment to get over his shock, but it's true: The Pope of Trash is a man of the cloth, ordained by the Universal Life Church, an outfit that sells minister's licenses by mail order.

Asemiregular cast of characters drifts into Viva House in West Baltimore, quietly taking seats on folding chairs at long metal tables. They've come for the free lunch: hot dogs, salad and beans, plus a bonus sandwich to go. "I haven't been here for a month," says one of their servers, a tall, loose-limbed woman with femme-fatale blond hair. "I feel awful." If you go Laura Lippman will sign copies of her book, What the Dead Know, at 7 tonight at Borders Books & Music, 170 W. Ridgely Road, Timonium.

"Baltimore Blues" by Laura Lippman. Avon Books. 290 pages. $5.95. paper.Laura Lippman's first book, in which a 29-year-old ex-reporter named Tess Monaghan turns amateur detective in order to save the neck of a buddy, is two first novels in one: a tough-minded murder mystery and a funny, rueful tale of love and longing. The whodunit part is fast-moving and nicely cynical, but it's the wry subplot (not to mention the dead-on touches of local color) that makes "Baltimore Blues" both entertaining and unexpectedly touching.

Laura Lippman, reporter at The Sun, will talk about her second Baltimore-based mystery novel, "Charm City," as part of the library's series, "Write from Maryland!" at 7 p.m. Sept. 23 at the East Columbia branch.Information or registration: 410-313-7700.Pub Date: 9/16/97

Morning Books with Coffee will meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Howard County Library's East Columbia branch, 6600 Cradlerock Way. The book to be discussed is "What the Dead Know" by Laura Lippman. All are welcome. Call 410-313-7762 for more information.

"The Sugar House," by Laura Lippman (William Morrow, 320 pages, $24). Laura Lippman is a Sun reporter, a treasured colleague and a serial mysterian, This is her fifth intricated Baltimore-based, newspaper-tinted whodunit. There is no way that appears on these pages -- by me or anyone else -- is likely to be taken as coldly objective. But I shall tell you this: The earlier Tess Monaghan mysteries have been vastly and justly lauded, and I found this one at least as strong and attention devouring as its predecessors.

Morning Books with Coffee will meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Howard County Library's East Columbia branch, 6600 Cradlerock Way. The book to be discussed is "What the Dead Know" by Laura Lippman. All are welcome. Call 410-313-7762 for more information.

What are lessons of Healthy Howard? A single payer health care system is the only solution. NotableMA single payer will face the same problems the multiple private payers of today face - doctors terrified of being sued ordering expensive and unnecessary tests to stave off malpractice attorneys; patients who want approval and payment for every technological advancement that comes around so that they can be saved from the jaws of death; hospitals that...

Laura Lippman was just on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, promoting her new book, Life Sentences. Ferguson asked if she sees much of another famous Baltimorean, John Waters. "Yeah, well, I'll tell the story because it was outed in the newspaper," she said. "We tried to keep it secret. John Waters was my minister. He married us." "Us" being Lippman and Wire creator David Simon. Ferguson needed a moment to get over his shock, but it's true: The Pope of Trash is a man of the cloth, ordained by the Universal Life Church, an outfit that sells minister's licenses by mail order.

Life Sentences By Laura Lippman William Morrow / 352 pages / $24.99 Cassandra Fallows must determine whether Calliope Jenkins killed her infant son. Fallows, the hero of the latest stand-alone mystery from best-selling author Laura Lippman, is a middle-aged writer who grew up in Northwest Baltimore. Brimming with bright chatter, Lippman's engaging standalone novel evokes nostalgia for 1960s and '70s Baltimore as it traverses neighborhoods and landmarks like Bolton Hill, Mount Vernon and Silber's Bakery.

tuesday Revenge of the Spellmans : by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster, $25) Private investigator Isabel Spellman is back on the case and back on the couch - in court-ordered therapy after getting a little too close to her previous subject. She reluctantly takes the case of a suspicious husband who wants his wife tailed, thinking it will be easy work. But with each passing hour, Izzy finds herself with more questions than hard evidence. Life Sentences : by Laura Lippman (William Morrow, $24.99)

Parkville Man charged with threatening O'Malley After undergoing a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, a Parkville man charged this week with threatening to kill Gov. Martin O'Malley was released yesterday and placed on home detention to await trial. Walter C. Abbott Jr., a 44-year- old construction worker, was arrested Tuesday after allegedly sending an e-mail to the governor's official Web site in which he threatened to strangle O'Malley. Abbott had previously sent e-mails to O'Malley in which he expressed frustration with the governor's immigration policies and their effect on his ability to get construction work, but had never received a real response.

tuesday Revenge of the Spellmans : by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster, $25) Private investigator Isabel Spellman is back on the case and back on the couch - in court-ordered therapy after getting a little too close to her previous subject. She reluctantly takes the case of a suspicious husband who wants his wife tailed, thinking it will be easy work. But with each passing hour, Izzy finds herself with more questions than hard evidence. Life Sentences : by Laura Lippman (William Morrow, $24.99)

Life Sentences By Laura Lippman William Morrow / 352 pages / $24.99 Cassandra Fallows must determine whether Calliope Jenkins killed her infant son. Fallows, the hero of the latest stand-alone mystery from best-selling author Laura Lippman, is a middle-aged writer who grew up in Northwest Baltimore. Brimming with bright chatter, Lippman's engaging standalone novel evokes nostalgia for 1960s and '70s Baltimore as it traverses neighborhoods and landmarks like Bolton Hill, Mount Vernon and Silber's Bakery.

Another Thing to Fall By Laura Lippman William Morrow/HarperCollins / 326 pages / $24.95 Laura Lippman knows Charm City, inside and out. Her mysteries are as much about the complexities of Baltimore as they are about crime, who commits it and why. Another Thing to Fall, the former Sun reporter's 10th novel featuring P.I. Tess Monaghan, reveals yet another side to Charm City. And perhaps its seamiest yet. Monaghan usually takes on complicated crimes and inevitably ends up working with the Baltimore P.D., either overtly or covertly.

Notes Maryland's strange history of Jim Crow: It's impossible to consider Maryland's past and not be struck by the irony of race relations in the Free State. The birthplace of the nation's greatest abolitionists, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, was also the home of slavery's staunchest defender, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the infamous Dred Scott decision. Sun columnist C. Fraser Smith explores the state's past and the effects Jim Crow segregation laws had on everyday Marylanders in his new book Here Lies Jim Crow, to be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press this summer.