Tess Monaghan: A Mysterious Profile

By Laura Lippman

The New York Times–bestselling author of Hush Hush interviews the lead character of her hit series.

In 1997, the character of Tess Monaghan debuted in Laura Lippman’s detective novel, Baltimore Blues. The book launched the bestselling series that continues to delight readers decades later. But who exactly is Theresa Esther Weinstein Monaghan when she’s not tackling troublesome cases?

In this fictional article, author Laura Lippman takes you to Baltimore where she speaks with the accidental detective herself to find out what makes her tick. You’ll learn about Tess’s parents and her childhood. You’ll hear from her longtime boyfriend Edward “Crow” Ransome, as well as her lifelong best friend, Whitney Talbot. Lippman shares what daily life is like for the tough PI. Soon, you’ll discover why readers can’t get enough of Tess.

Praise for Laura Lippman and the Tess Monaghan Novels

“One of the best novelists around, period.” —The Washington Post

“Lippman is incapable of writing an un-compelling mystery.” —The Baltimore Sun

“A juicy whodunnit.” —Entertainment Weekly on Another Thing to Fall

“Lippman is a dynamic storyteller. . . . This series [is] one of the best.” —USA Today

“An imaginative, well-plotted mystery.” —South Florida Sun Sentinel on Butcher’s Hill

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504074483

Laura Lippman

Since Laura Lippman’s debut, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the “essential” crime writers of the last 100 years. Stephen King called her “special, even extraordinary,” and Gillian Flynn wrote, “She is simply a brilliant novelist.” Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty-five languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her teenager.

Book preview

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Tess Monaghan

A Mysterious Profile

Laura Lippman

Tess Monaghan

The Accidental Detective

Special to the Beacon-Light

BALTIMORE—Tess Monaghan spends a lot of time thinking about what she calls the relief problem. Not relief to foreign hot spots, although she can become quickly heated on almost any political subject you wish to discuss. No, Monaghan, perhaps Baltimore’s best-known private investigator, thinks a lot about what we’ll call feminine relief.

If you’re a guy on surveillance, you have a lot more options, she says, sitting in her Butchers Hill office on a recent fall morning and flipping through one of the catalogs that cater to the special needs of investigators and private-security firms. Much of this high-tech gadgetry holds little interest for Monaghan, who admits to mild Luddite tendencies. That said, she’s so paranoid about caller ID that she uses two cell phones—one for outgoing calls, one for incoming.

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