Lizzie Skurnick wrote a very interesting feature article for the Baltimore City Paper about Baltimore Gumshoe writer Laura Lippman and her new critically acclaimed novel, Every Secret Thing.

Apparently, the novel is a huge departure for Lippman, who typically centers her mystery novels on the vaguely autobiographical fictional character, “sometime-P.I. Tess Monaghan, avid rower and journalist by day, gumshoe by night.”

The novel centers around two 11 year old girls who abduct and murder the baby girl of a prominent Baltimore Judge. Seven years later, the two girls are released from the juvenile justice system and babies start to go missing again.

Lippmann said of her experience writing this novel, “Because I knew that this book would never be read as autobiography … I was much freer to raid the darkest parts of my mind to write it.”

Although I am not a huge follower of the mystery genre, this novel sounds dark, gritty, disturbing, and basically right up my ally. I’m looking forward to reading it.

In no way do I want to detract from Lippmann’s own writing and accomplishments, but I think that it is important to note that her boyfriend is David Simon, author of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, and now executive producer of The Wire. Some may say this couple is doing us a disservice portraying Baltimore in a negative light. Nonsense. They’re opening up this city to the world and showing what exactly is distinctive and genuinely interesting about this city.

Smear on please.

And on an unrelated note, my all time favorite Baltimore Gumshoe novelist is Dashiell Hammett.

More on Laura Lippmann in her Slate diary.