MAY 2021 - AudioFile
Lippman’s ingenious, allusive, and daring new thriller makes for a massively entertaining audiobook. It nods to REAR WINDOW, MISERY, and a host of other iconic suspense fictions, even including a brief appearance by Lippman’s own trademark PI Tess Monaghan, but Lippman spins them all. Narrator Jason Culp creates vivid characters and delivers emotion, color, humor, and momentum with skill and verve. The setup: Famous (if fading) novelist Gerry Anderson, confined to bed by an injury, starts getting threatening calls from a nonexistent person, a character from his long ago breakout novel, DREAM GIRL. (Monaghan declines to take his case.) Lippman pulls off a whiz-bang plot on top of a deliciously accurate portrait of the good, bad, and ugly of being a brand-name 21st-century writer. B.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 04/19/2021
Successful novelist Gerry Andersen, the protagonist of this delicious literary thriller from Edgar winner Lippman (Lady in the Lake), has moved to Baltimore from New York to be near his ailing mother. He has barely settled into his duplex penthouse when his mother dies. While mulling over his agent’s suggestion that he write a memoir and trying to overcome the rising fear that he’ll never write again, Gerry slips and falls down his dangerous (but artistically designed) staircase. His injuries are severe, and he’s confined to bed and cared for by round-the-clock nurses. Befuddled by painkillers, Gerry’s mind drifts back over episodes in his life: his childhood, the highs and lows of his three marriages, his book tours and teaching jobs. One night, he receives a phone call from a woman claiming to be Aubrey, a character in his first—and still royalty-producing—novel, Dream Girl. The calls persist, as do shadowy nighttime appearances of a woman. He scrambles to separate truth from possible hallucinations until the morning he awakes to find a woman undeniably dead in his bed. Perceptive, often amusing insights into a writer’s mind make this a standout. Lippman is in top form for this enticingly witty, multilayered guessing game. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary. (June)
From the Publisher
"It’s modern noir with a strong hint of Stephen King’s Misery. I absolutely loved her earlier novel Sunburn. Her writing is very slick and intelligent noir." — Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"With this tip of the hat to Stephen King's Misery, Dream Girl is funny and suspenseful, with a dread-worthy final twist." — People
"Lippman’s sharp and timely thriller is a fast read, one that will surely please her many longtime devotees as well as attract new and enthusiastic fans." — USA Today
“The gifted Ms. Lippman, in this tale of a talented cad who more or less gets what he deserves, shifts between passages hard-boiled and satirical. Dream Girl offers a healthy dose of suspense and wittily skewers literary life.” — Wall Street Journal
"Socially conscious (the #MeToo movement makes a decisive entrance into the plot) and packed with humor, ghosts and narrative turns of the screw, Lippman’s Dream Girl is indeed a dream of a novel for suspense lovers and fans of literary satire alike." — Washington Post
"Laura Lippman is one of the best novelists working today, period. Seeing her name on the cover of a book is a guarantee of a highly satisfying reading experience...Laura Lippman is a major writer. If you don’t know her, there’s 25 books waiting for you." — Chicago Tribune
"Positively humming with the vibrancy of a slew of crime-fiction authors during a high-energy drinking session, Dream Girl shimmers with suspense, surprises, wry humor, and an ever-present stream of appreciations for the pleasures, frustrations, and oddities inherent in the life of a writer." — Boston Globe
"A nicely shivery homage to Stephen King’s Misery with an atmosphere all its own." — Seattle Times
"Dream Girl is the darkly comic thriller of the season.” — Irish Times
“My dream novel. I devoured this in three days. The sharpest, clearest-eyed take on our #MeToo reckoning yet. Plus: enthralling." — Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Dare Me and The Fever
“Dream Girl the ideal cutting-edge, socially-conscious entertainment for late summer. . . . Packed with social criticism, satire, ghosts and narrative turns of the screw, Lippman's Dream Girl is indeed a dream of a novel.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
“High tension fuels Dream Girl while vividly illustrating the humiliation of being confined to a bed, having every bodily need tended by another... Edgar winner Lippman, who has won every mystery award, envelops witty dialogue, a complicated character and a complex plot in Dream Girl.” — The Sun-Sentinel
"Perceptive, often amusing insights into a writer’s mind make this a standout. Lippman is in top form for this enticingly witty, multilayered guessing game." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Lippman never stops twisting the plot into a deliciously intricate pretzel, right up to the jaw-dropping finale. This is both a beguiling look at the mysteries of authorship and a powerful #MeToo novel, but that's only the tip of a devilishly jagged iceberg..." — Booklist (starred review)
"Lippman (Lady in the Lake) nods at Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock in this hair-raising tale, but makes it wholly hers and completely riveting. She conveys the horror of being housebound and reliant on strangers, as well as the fear of losing one’s mind. It’s a page-turning, plot-twisting masterpiece." — Library Journal (starred review)
USA Today
"Lippman’s sharp and timely thriller is a fast read, one that will surely please her many longtime devotees as well as attract new and enthusiastic fans."
Chicago Tribune
"Laura Lippman is one of the best novelists working today, period. Seeing her name on the cover of a book is a guarantee of a highly satisfying reading experience...Laura Lippman is a major writer. If you don’t know her, there’s 25 books waiting for you."
Wall Street Journal
The gifted Ms. Lippman, in this tale of a talented cad who more or less gets what he deserves, shifts between passages hard-boiled and satirical. Dream Girl offers a healthy dose of suspense and wittily skewers literary life.
Paula Hawkins
"It’s modern noir with a strong hint of Stephen King’s Misery. I absolutely loved her earlier novel Sunburn. Her writing is very slick and intelligent noir."
Washington Post
"Socially conscious (the #MeToo movement makes a decisive entrance into the plot) and packed with humor, ghosts and narrative turns of the screw, Lippman’s Dream Girl is indeed a dream of a novel for suspense lovers and fans of literary satire alike."
Boston Globe
"Positively humming with the vibrancy of a slew of crime-fiction authors during a high-energy drinking session, Dream Girl shimmers with suspense, surprises, wry humor, and an ever-present stream of appreciations for the pleasures, frustrations, and oddities inherent in the life of a writer."
Irish Times
"Dream Girl is the darkly comic thriller of the season.
People
"With this tip of the hat to Stephen King's Misery, Dream Girl is funny and suspenseful, with a dread-worthy final twist."
Seattle Times
"A nicely shivery homage to Stephen King’s Misery with an atmosphere all its own."
Megan Abbott
My dream novel. I devoured this in three days. The sharpest, clearest-eyed take on our #MeToo reckoning yet. Plus: enthralling."
Chicago Tribune
"Laura Lippman is one of the best novelists working today, period. Seeing her name on the cover of a book is a guarantee of a highly satisfying reading experience...Laura Lippman is a major writer. If you don’t know her, there’s 25 books waiting for you."
USA Today
"Lippman’s sharp and timely thriller is a fast read, one that will surely please her many longtime devotees as well as attract new and enthusiastic fans."
Wall Street Journal
The gifted Ms. Lippman, in this tale of a talented cad who more or less gets what he deserves, shifts between passages hard-boiled and satirical. Dream Girl offers a healthy dose of suspense and wittily skewers literary life.
Washington Post
"Socially conscious (the #MeToo movement makes a decisive entrance into the plot) and packed with humor, ghosts and narrative turns of the screw, Lippman’s Dream Girl is indeed a dream of a novel for suspense lovers and fans of literary satire alike."
Maureen Corrigan
“Dream Girl the ideal cutting-edge, socially-conscious entertainment for late summer. . . . Packed with social criticism, satire, ghosts and narrative turns of the screw, Lippman's Dream Girl is indeed a dream of a novel.
The Sun-Sentinel
High tension fuels Dream Girl while vividly illustrating the humiliation of being confined to a bed, having every bodily need tended by another... Edgar winner Lippman, who has won every mystery award, envelops witty dialogue, a complicated character and a complex plot in Dream Girl.
Booklist (starred review)
"Lippman never stops twisting the plot into a deliciously intricate pretzel, right up to the jaw-dropping finale. This is both a beguiling look at the mysteries of authorship and a powerful #MeToo novel, but that's only the tip of a devilishly jagged iceberg..."
Anna Quindlen
Don’t miss this novel.”
Washington Post on The Lady in the Lake
Inspired by the unsolved death of Shirley Parker... Lippman’s ambitious novel weaves some twenty points of view into a seamless, vivid whole. The novel demonstrates that Lippman, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, is both a skilled journalist and a masterful novelist.”
People on The Lady in the Lake
A cavalcade of narrators—including Cleo’s ghost, who wants Maddie to stop poking into her world—and Lippman’s expert storytelling bring the city’s tensions wondrously to life.”
Stephen King
The closest writer America has to Ruth Rendell.... What makes this book special, even extraordinary, is that the crossword puzzle aspect is secondary...[Lady in the Lake] reflects the gulf which then existed between what women were expected to be and what they aspired to be.
null Washington Post on The Lady in the Lake
Inspired by the unsolved death of Shirley Parker... Lippman’s ambitious novel weaves some twenty points of view into a seamless, vivid whole. The novel demonstrates that Lippman, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, is both a skilled journalist and a masterful novelist.”
null People on The Lady in the Lake
A cavalcade of narrators—including Cleo’s ghost, who wants Maddie to stop poking into her world—and Lippman’s expert storytelling bring the city’s tensions wondrously to life.”
Library Journal
01/01/2021
In Bentley's Tom Clancy Target Acquired, Jack Ryan Jr. is on a seemingly simple stakeout in Israel when he is targeted by trained killers. Ellroy delivers Widespread Panic in his latest, which features a former cop negotiating his way through dark-and-dirty Fifties Los Angeles as a private eye. In The Maze, retired NYPD Homicide Detective John Corey answers the call to help investigate when bodies are found buried on the beach. Broadcast journalist-turned-cybersecurity expert Ali Reynolds must deal with both a serial killer and a former employee of her husband just out of prison in Jance's Unfinished Business (100,000-copy first printing). In Johansen's The Bullet, it's bad news for forensic sculptor Eve Duncan when the former wife of her beloved Joe Quinn returns with dangerous secrets (100,000-copy first printing). In Lippman's tense fantasia, novelist Gerry Andersen is trapped in bed after an accident and fears he is losing his mind when he thinks he's getting phone calls from the main character in his big-deal novel Dream Girl (200,000-copy first printing). From mega-best-selling Patterson and former President Clinton, The President's Daughter features a new family in the White House—and a former White House family targeted by an international assassin (one-million-copy first printing). Joined by Quartermous, Woods hits the Jackpot with another Teddy Fay thriller, as Teddy investigates threats to a film festival in sumptuous Macau.
MAY 2021 - AudioFile
Lippman’s ingenious, allusive, and daring new thriller makes for a massively entertaining audiobook. It nods to REAR WINDOW, MISERY, and a host of other iconic suspense fictions, even including a brief appearance by Lippman’s own trademark PI Tess Monaghan, but Lippman spins them all. Narrator Jason Culp creates vivid characters and delivers emotion, color, humor, and momentum with skill and verve. The setup: Famous (if fading) novelist Gerry Anderson, confined to bed by an injury, starts getting threatening calls from a nonexistent person, a character from his long ago breakout novel, DREAM GIRL. (Monaghan declines to take his case.) Lippman pulls off a whiz-bang plot on top of a deliciously accurate portrait of the good, bad, and ugly of being a brand-name 21st-century writer. B.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2021-03-31
An injured literary lion is held captive in his waterfront Baltimore condo.
There's a moment in Lippman's latest novel when her delightful series detective, Tess Monaghan, walks into the room and, for a moment, it seems everything could be all right. Unfortunately, it's just a cameo, and we're soon back with our uninspiring cast of three: novelist Gerry Andersen, who's had a debilitating fall, and the two women taking care of him, personal assistant Victoria and night nurse Aileen. At 61, Andersen has never repeated the success of his prizewinning bestseller, Dream Girl, and it's been quite a while since he wrote anything at all. He moved to Baltimore to take care of his mother in her last days, but even after her unexpectedly speedy death, he didn't return to New York, where the last of his many bad decisions involving women is waiting to shake him down for whatever she can get. This ploy doesn't work, and the woman shows up in Baltimore. Even more distressing, Gerry gets a phone call from a woman claiming to be the inspiration for Dream Girl, only, as he's told everyone for years, there is no real person who played that role. All the while, no matter what happens, Andersen's mind generates a literary or cultural connection, from Pete Townshend's solo album to Ben Jonson's plays to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Some are explained, some aren't, so the reader sometimes feels as stupid as Gerry thinks everyone is. It's too bad this book has to be compared to Misery, because despite similarities in setup, it's no Misery. All the reveals come after you have figured them out; the murders are played for camp. The most gaspworthy moment in the book comes in the author's note: "If you want to play the game of figuring out who Gerry Andersen is, check out the author photo on this book." No! It can't be.
In her 25th novel, Lippman messes up a near-perfect batting average.
