Baltimore Blues

Laura Lippman has been writing the Tess Monaghan series of mystery novels for quite awhile.  I had read one of them a few years ago from the middle of the series but never went back to start at the beginning.  Now with my Female Detective book discussion group we read the first book in the series, Baltimore Blues.

Tess Monaghan it turns out is a frustrated journalist, who like her creator, Lippman, lost a job on the newspaper in Baltimore where she lives and is looking for a new job.  She is a young adult, out on her own for the first time, living in an apartment above her aunt's bookstore.  She is exchanging work in the bookstore for rent and also working for her uncle in the city records office.  It turns out that he is paying her personally to do part of his job.

Tess is the product of a Jewish mother and a Catholic father and was brought up with no real religious practice, but interestingly, the topic of Judaism seems to come up in a few of her books.  It is mentioned in this book, when a friend of hers is killed and she attends the Jewish funeral.  In the only other book I read so far, By A Spider's Thread, she is working with an Orthodox group to find a missing family.  So I am interested to see how Lippman continues to weave Judaism into her msytery novels.

In the first book, Baltimore Blues, we learn about Tess and how she backs into being a private detective.  The book is clever, entertaining and holds your attention to the end.  But I have read reviews that Lippman continues to develop her writing style as the series progresses.

Looking forward to following the exploits of Tess Monaghan as she grows as a private investigator and also learns more about Jewish and Catholic roots and her family background.