ReviewLaura Lippman’s suspenseful new tale a modern twist on classic noir
With its world-weary femme fatale, handsome investigator and psychological games, Sunburn ticks all the important pulp fiction boxes
by Laura Lippman
Faber & Faber
4/5 stars
I am starting to believe that Baltimore native Laura Lippman is the most versatile crime writer around. Whether she’s extending her excellent series featuring reporter-turned-private investigator Tess Monaghan or producing rich, complex stand-alone tales such as Wilde Lake (2016), she plots like a villain, produces snappy dialogue and is brilliantly atmospheric.
Another one-off, Sunburn is Lippman as a crime-writing historian, providing an updated pastiche of noir masters James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. “It’s the sunburned shoulders that get him,” she begins. The shoulders belong to Polly Costello, a waitress and “redhead well into her thirties” who meets Adam Bosk in the High-Ho bar. “A Ken doll kind of guy, if Ken had a great year-round tan,” Bosk knows “[Polly’s] up to something”. This something is a tangle of bad marriages, lost children, US$2 million and, this being noir, murder. Bosk falls for Polly’s “thin, pointy, hunched” shoulders hard enough to take a job as a cook in the High-Ho.
In a twist worthy of Thompson, this is a front: he’s a private eye hunting Polly for that cool US$2 million. And he’s not alone. Lippman’s writing is convincing, whether she is red hot, sultry or paranoid as the twists mount up. Simply terrific.
by Joe Dunthorne
Penguin