I'd Know You Anywhere - Large Print by Laura Lippman (Paperback)

About the Book

"Laura Lippman is among the select group of novelists who have invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative, and exciting work."--George Pelecanos

"Lippman's taut, mesmerizing, and exceptionally smart drama of predator and prey is at once unusually sensitive and utterly compelling.--Booklist

Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of What the Dead Know, Life Sentences, and the acclaimed Tess Monaghan p.i. series, delivers a stunning stand-alone novel that explores the lasting effects on lives touched by crime. With I'd Know You Anywhere, Lippman--master of mystery and psychological suspense, winner of every major literary prize given for crime fiction, including the Edgar(R), Agatha, and Nero Wolfe Awards--tells a gripping and richly textured tale of a young woman whose life dangerously entwines once again with a man on Death Row who had kidnapped her when she was a teenager. This is superior mystery writing in the vein of Kate Atkinson.

Book Synopsis

"Laura Lippman is among the select group of novelists who have invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative, and exciting work."
--George Pelecanos

"Lippman's taut, mesmerizing, and exceptionally smart drama of predator and prey is at once unusually sensitive and utterly compelling.
--Booklist

Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of What the Dead Know, Life Sentences, and the acclaimed Tess Monaghan p.i. series, delivers a stunning stand-alone novel that explores the lasting effects on lives touched by crime. With I'd Know You Anywhere, Lippman--master of mystery and psychological suspense, winner of every major literary prize given for crime fiction, including the Edgar(R), Agatha, and Nero Wolfe Awards--tells a gripping and richly textured tale of a young woman whose life dangerously entwines once again with a man on Death Row who had kidnapped her when she was a teenager. This is superior mystery writing in the vein of Kate Atkinson.

From the Back Cover

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author returns with a new stand-alone novel--a powerful and utterly riveting tale that skillfully moves between past and present to explore the lasting effects of crime on a victim's life....I'd Know You Anywhere

Eliza Benedict cherishes her peaceful, ordinary suburban life with her successful husband and children, thirteen-year-old Iso and eight-year-old Albie. But her tranquillity is shattered when she receives a letter from the last person she ever expects--or wants--to hear from: Walter Bowman. There was your photo, in a magazine. Of course, you are older now. Still, I'd know you anywhere.

In the summer of 1985, when she was fifteen, Eliza was kidnapped by Walter and held hostage for almost six weeks. He had killed at least one girl and Eliza always suspected he had other victims as well. Now on death row in Virginia for the rape and murder of his final victim, Walter seems to be making a heartfelt act of contrition as his execution nears. Though Eliza wants nothing to do with him, she's never forgotten that Walter was most unpredictable when ignored. Desperate to shelter her children from this undisclosed trauma in her past, she cautiously makes contact with Walter. She's always wondered why Walter let her live, and perhaps now he'll tell her--and share the truth about his other victims.

Yet as Walter presses her for more and deeper contact, it becomes clear that he is after something greater than forgiveness. He wants Eliza to remember what really happened that long-ago summer. He wants her to save his life. And Eliza, who has worked hard for her comfortable, cocooned life, will do anything to protect it--even if it means finally facing the events of that horrifying summer and the terrible truth she's kept buried inside.

An edgy, utterly gripping tale of psychological manipulation that will leave readers racing to the final page, I'd Know You Anywhere is a virtuoso performance from acclaimed, award-winning author Laura Lippman that is sure to be her biggest hit yet.

Review Quotes

"Lippman has not only expanded the frontiers of genre fiction, she has enriched literature as a whole." - Chicago Sun-Times
"Lippman is a writing powerhouse." - USA Today
"Award-winning Lippman continues to send depth charges into the sea of crime fiction, taking measure of psychic pain in the wake of violence, and the mysteries of memory.... Stoked by stinging dialogue and arresting evocations of the fog of fear, doubt, and guilt versus the laser-lock pursuit of survival, Lippman's taut, mesmerizing, and exceptionally smart drama of predator and prey is at once unusually sensitive and utterly compelling." - Booklist (starred review)
"Ex-journalist Lippman never forgets as she moves from past to present and from perspective to perspective that nothing is more important--or more elusive--than the truth." - Kirkus Reviews
How likely is it that a suburban wife and mother who was kidnapped at age 15 and held for almost six weeks by a rapist and murderer would let her former captor con her into visiting him on death row? The odds don't look great, but then again, a good writer, like a clever sociopath, can talk people into all kinds of improbable situations. Laura Lippman is quite a good writer, and in her creepy psychological-suspense novel, I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE, she sets up this bizarre scenario as a way to examine the power that comes from intimate knowledge of another person." - New York Times Book Review
From its gripping opening pages about a burned-out author's bookstore reading, Laura Lippman's "Life Sentences" may be the most absorbing, entertaining mystery published in the last year. Lippman does it all, from creating vivid, three-dimensional characters, to painting a beautifully detailed portrait of her hometown, Baltimore, to crafting a plot that drives readers along at a fast clip while simultaneously building suspense as one dramatic revelation leads to another. - Boston Globe
Laura Lippman is a virtuoso.... burnishes the author's reputation as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary fiction... By novel's end, when the frayed filaments of plot are fluently braided and bound, Ms. Lippman has once more challenged, realigned and ultimately transcended the boundaries of genre. "How many pages could one's life produce if you weren't a head of state or a general?" Cassandra wonders. The answer, in Laura Lippman's case, is "not enough." - New York Observer
Readers buckle in with high anticipation as each of best-selling Lippman's mysteries featuring the Baltimore private eye Tess Monaghan appears. But this major-prize-winning crime writer has also crafted stand-alone novels, including What the Dead Know (2007), and now reveals her great gift for whiplash short stories in this top-rate collection....In an intoxicating mix of Poe-like horror and the pleasingly bitter irony of Dorothy Parker, Lippman tells deliciously vicious, topsy-turvy tales of women taking revenge for the endless insults and injuries of sexist, selfish men, and, for good measure, of guys who rid themselves of manipulative women....Lippman is a class act and a potent storyteller in these elegant, furious, and blues-blasting dispatches from the endless war between the sexes. - Booklist
"With the summer reading season coming to a close, don't let I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE be the one that got away." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"I'd Know You Anywhere" ranks with her very best." - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
"I'd Know You Anywhere" continues Laura Lippman's extraordinary run of stand-alone novels (alternating with her lighter books about private eye Tess Monaghan). From its unsettling opening to its breathtaking conclusion, "Anywhere" exemplifies Lippman's strengths: compassion, intense prose and deep empathy for the snares of ambiguous emotions. - Seattle Times
The alchemy of memory and fact, of guilt and surviving, and the relationship between predator and prey meld in the superior psychological thriller "I'd Know You Anywhere."... Once again, Lippman shows she understands the human heart, the power of love and the value of self-preservation. Lippman, who launched her career with her series on Baltimore private detective Tess Monaghan, delivers thorough character studies in the superb "I' d Know You Anywhere." - Kansas City Star
"Lippman is at the height of her powers here, smoothly alternating between the horrors of Eliza's 15th summer and her present, excruciating, dilemma--does she respond, hoping to quiet Walter and preserve her hard-won privacy, or ignore him and risk his wrath? Sensitively examing capital punishment from every side, Lippman delivers an emotionally complex drama that cements her reputation as one of the smartest crime writers around." - People
"Lippman deftly keeps the balls aloft with a strong structure -- a straight-ahead chronology interrupted by surgical flashbacks -- and evocative writing." - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"She's one of the best novelists around, period." - Washington Post
"Lippman's dedicated fans will find themselves well rewarded with I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE, an exceptional novel in every way, which is sure to gain her many new followers." - San Diego Union-Tribune
The popular mystery-series author's latest stand-alone: a terrifying story about a death-row inmate obsessed with the only victim he left alive. - O magazine
This is a story that grips you not with suspense but with its acute psychological autopsy of a survivor. Lippman's knack for elucidating the horrors humans can inflict on one another through violence and manipulation -- while telling a compelling story --is disarming and fascinating.- - USA Today
I'd Know You Anywhere is a crime story, but it's not a whodunit. Rather, it's an exquisitely sensitive story about the psychological impact of crime on its victims. It's a story about shame, about anger, about survivor's guilt. - Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Laura Lippman is one of those uncommonly talented authors whose work continues to get better in every book she writes. I'd Know You Anywhere is a riveting psychological suspense novel. - Globe and Mail (Toronto)
I'd Know You Anywhere is compelling reading, its socially-conscious topic putting me in mind of Jodi Picoult's books. It also struck me as honest, in that there are no easy answers for any character. Ms. Lippman appears to inhabit her characters with ease, switching voices -- and in the case of Eliza, ages -- convincingly. She channels serial-killer Walter with aplomb, an ability she talked about when she appeared on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Ms. Lippman's writing is eminently readable. The action is unpacked slowly, suspensefully, in tightly-constructed chapters that are real page-turners. ... I'd Know You Anywhere should make any lover of contemporary crime fiction happy. - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Near the start of this outstanding novel of psychological suspense from Edgar winner Lippman (Life Sentences), Eliza Benedict, a 38-year-old married mother of two living in suburban Maryland, receives a letter from Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped her the summer she was 15 and is now on death row. The nar-rative shifts between the present and that long ago summer, when Eliza involuntarily became a part of Walter's endless road trip, including the fateful night when he picked up another teenage girl, Holly Tackett. Soon after Walter killed Holly, Eliza was rescued and taken home. Eliza must now balance a need for closure with a desire to protect herself emotionally. Walter wants something specific from her, but she has no idea what, and she's not sure that she wants to know. All the relationships, from the sometimes contentious one between Eliza and her sister, Vonnie, to the significantly stranger one between Walter and Barbara La-Fortuny, an advocate for prisoners, provide depth and breadth to this absorbing story. - Publishers Weekly (starred review)