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Finished Life Sentences by Laura Lippman for the Pub Challenge.
This is another of her standalones, and it's very good but hard to discuss without bringing in spoilers.
Here's the bare bones: Cassandra Fallowes is an author. She's written two wildly successful memoirs and one novel that was received less than warmly by the public. She heads back to Baltimore to start memoir #3, which will be about the girls she was friends with growing up and another of their classmates (who was kind of on the fringe of their group) who is at the center of a mystery. The woman, Calliope (pronounced Callie-ope), has a son who has been missing since he was a baby. When social workers (and then police) asked what happened to him, she would plead the Fifth. The general assumption, obviously, is that he's dead, but nobody can prove it. So Cassandra decides that she's going to solve it.
This book was really hard to put down, and I kept getting things wrong--I don't think I called a single thing correctly. I think most people would enjoy her books, but they're especially fun for Baltimore people, because it's always awesome to be like, "Hey, I get my groceries there!" or "That's the street I live on!"
(I'm a dork, but I love things like that.)
Plus, her books are really well-written and interesting. This one will probably show up for people's birthday or Christmas presents this year. :)
