The Most Dangerous Thing audiobook

Something happened in the woods in 1979. A man died, covered in blood, mud, and a litter of secrets. Whodunit? And why?In late 1970s Baltimore five children join forces, the three Halloran boys and two girls, Mickey and Gwen. They are intimately connected to the death. Decades later an inebriated Gordon Halloran smashes his car into a concrete barrier and his demise summons the remaining four friends back together to face the past.Laura Lippman - image from her site - Photo credit: Leslie UnruhLaura Lippman has written a can’t-put-it-down page turner as she reveals secret after secret, building steadily to the final confrontation. I loved her methodology, switching among the five primaries and their parents, who figure prominently. She not only reveals clues to and perspectives on the mystery, bit by bit, but constructs her characters like a hand-building potter who keeps adding clumps of clay and molding them into a final, articulated human form. This is the strength of the book. We see her characters as children and as adults, and get to see how they see each other. These are not one-dimensional artifacts, but real people with histories, regrets, joys, hopes and disappointments. The impact of their childhood experiences flows through the rest of their lives. It makes for a very rich and satisfying reading experience. Lippman is a master of her craft and she is in fine form here. You will want to know what the most dangerous thing turns out to be and will rip through the pages until you find out.=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram and FB pagesMy reviews of other books by Laura Lippman-----2010 - I’d Know You Anywhere-----2007 - What the Dead Know

I recently listened to I'd Know You Anywhere and really liked Lippman's style. I was thrilled to have won this through FirstReads. I just finished reading it and realized that it's not even due to be released for another four days.I tend to take a book with me to work to read at lunchtime. This is one that I had to leave at home because I knew that I wouldn't get any work done if I took it with me. The past and present story lines mesh together so well and nothing is as it seems.I really like some of Lippman's narrative choices here. For some of the past scenes, she used the first person plural viewpoint. It's an interesting choice because the "we" is five kids, but you never know which one is narrating. It's as if they are narrating together as a third party. I don't even think I can explain it right, but it really works. I like how she tells the story from a variety of angles: the children as children, the children as adults, the parents when the children are young, and the parents when the children are middle-aged. It shows how every viewpoint is partly right and partly wrong. I couldn't put this book down and I'm really looking forward to reading more of Lippman's work.

Secrets of what happened in the woods the night of a hurricane in 1979 come back to haunt four adults when they reunite after all these years for the death of one of their friends. Needless to say, this was a very sad, dark, depressing, mystery. The author told the story from the perspectives of many characters in the first narrative switching between past and present. Doing so actually gave a lot of insight into nature of each person and made for a rich, deeper story. You learn so much about their lives and how each of them viewed the same situations and people differently. It seemed like they knew the truth about each other and the real person they were when they didin't know the same themselves. The group of five kids that used to play together in the woods were three brothers (Sean, Tim, and Go-Go in chronological age) and two girls that were best friends (Gwen and Mickey). Gwen is the pretty girl with a father who is a doctor and a stay at home mother. The boys's father jumps from job to job because of his hot temper and their mother tries to keep up the house with no help. Sean is the cautious one, Tim is jealous of Sean, and Go-Go is weak and fragile. Mickey doesn't have as much money as the others and she doesn't have a stable family life. Her mother's boyfriend acts as her step-father so she has a lot of anger and resentment. A lot of this attitude is what leads the group to seek adventure in the woods which becomes the root of their secrets.The thing I like most about this book was learning how people really see and feel about each other. How one best friend sees and really feels about the other. How a wife sees and really feels about her husband. How parents really see and feel about their kids. It is scary how much people keep their real feelings hidden. To me, those were the most interesting secrets. Even though the book was leading up to the reveal of the big secrets, these secrets were interwoven all throughout the story. And in the end, you are supposed to believe that some secrets should stay that way because they will only hurt others and that  revealing them only absolves you. The author said in the afterword that this was a very personal book for her and her most autobiographical. I wonder if this is her way of revealing her own secrets so they won't hurt others but will absolve her. 

Getting up from your mistakes and trying to live well today; to try again. I struggled with this book; not because it was bad, but rather it is a break in style from what I expect from Laura Lippman. I can genuinely claim Lippman is in my top 5 favourite authors, and I anxiously await each new release. The Most Dangerous Thing has her taking risk with her voice and unfortunately that collided with my preconceived notions. I believe this is an acquired taste and could prove to be one of her best books.That said there are plenty of things I did love in the book. Given my background in psychology (and family science) I am always intrigued when an author successfully demonstrates the consequences of a quirk in human nature. In this book all the main characters act out of a perceived interest of the needs of the others, but yet no one talks with each other. Too often the stumbling blocks in life are not random, they typically are caused by our assumptions and general fear of confronting difficult situations. The Most Dangerous Thing features five friends, their parents, a priest, and a homeless man. Lock into the prison a small neighborhood creates they all go about forging relationships built on secrets and distrust. That is pretty standard fare for most people, but their situation is brought to a head with the death of the homeless man. The events of that night are banished from the memories of all involved, never to be discussed again. Something isn't right, and everyone stirs with those problems, but yet remain silent out of solidarity to the other. Each assuming they are the only one struggling. This plan works well, or at least passably until the youngest of the group some 30 years later, who has relapsed once again into alcoholism, is killed in a single vehicle accident; or maybe it was suicide. This brings all the surviving characters together once again, and this time the past won't stay silent. Truth, no matter how hard will win out eventually.With this tale Lippman has revealed a great life lesson. Problems must be dealt with, the sooner the better. Either you deal with them in the present when they are at their smallest, or you postpone them to face later when they are bigger, accumulating more baggage and inflicting more damage as they steadily roll along. The best you can hope for is a miserable life and death before the truth finds you. A recent This American Life detailed the story of Jeff Smith, a state senator from Missouri, who made a small mistake (a slap on the wrist crime) but decided to lie about it. He spent a year in Federal prison by the time he was done. Or we have the numerous examples of professional athletes that used illegal steroids from BALCO who thought it would be a good idea to lie to federal investigators. They still lost their reputations and all their officially recognized accomplishments, and now they went to jail too.The beauty of what Lippman has done is create a complex interwoven tale of lies and secrets that will leave you pondering just what happened, why it happened, and just who is at fault. The reality is no one and everyone are at fault, much like the problems in our life. Happiness is not found in blame, because that is like pushing the river trying to get it right. Rather happiness is found in forgiveness and living in the now. Getting up from your mistakes and trying to live well today; to try again.The only downside for me was the method of telling the story. Typically a book will start with the action, the big event, then spend the rest of the story explaining it. Lippman starts with the past and jumps to the future, switching perspective between all the main characters every chapter. The whole time she circles the main event in ever tightening circles until she finally gets there in the last pages. This had me wondering where we were going the whole time, and this ambiguity left me feeling uncomfortable. That is more of a statement about me, always liking to know where we are going, not wanting to give up control. I think a second read would much more satisfying, knowing all the spoilers. But again that's my personality and not a statement about the quality of the book.

Laura Lippman admits that this is the most biographical novel she's written, setting it in what is essentially her childhood neighborhood. But that's where the similarity stops--the only secrets she's keeping is how she comes up with such riveting fiction time and time again.Her characters in "The Most Dangerous Thing", however, have been keeping a secret for many, many years. Something happened to the little neighborhood collection of five once inseparable children that that formed them into the long estranged adults they have become. That secret clearly haunts them still, especially as four of them gather for the fifth's funeral, all wondering if it was really an accidental car crash or if it was suicide by the one person they think was most scarred by the secret that they keep. Flashbacks to their childhoods help move the present day psychological suspense at a rather quick pace, pages turn rapidly as the puzzle pieces come together and they learn that they are not the only ones who have been keeping secrets. This book is truly Lippman at her finest.

THE MOST DANGEROUS THING by Laura Lippman08/11 - HarperCollins Publishers - Hardcover, 352 pagesCould you take a life altering secret to your grave?It was a different time growing up in the 70’s and 80’s you had the freedom to roam unsupervised and be independent in a way that will never happen again. A group of children met one summer with different backgrounds, home environments, and sexes never giving any of that a thought, only worrying about the next great adventure and challenge the parental boundaries.Tim, Sean and Gordon or “Go-Go” to everyone who knew him were the wild Halloran brothers who befriended two girls Mickey and Gwen and all of their lives took on new meaning. They were young when the escapades started and grew up together experimenting with finding out as much about each other as they did themselves. Go-Go was never as fast or quite as bright as the rest but he kept up even when they tried to lose him. They got into all manner of mischief including the discovery of an abandoned cabin with a strange man living inside. This man had no name and the mystery of who he was and where he came from was too intoxicating to this fearless five. The kids believed he was harmless, but that is the problem when you are young you trust everyone, sometimes the wrong one. Growing up was painful, when they parted it was with bitterness.After years of separation, the building of lives independent from each other they are reunited by Go-Go’s sudden and horrific death. No one wants to believe it could be suicide but everyone thinks that his actions don’t add up to accidental death. When the group of five now down to four start to remember the events of their time in the woods some of the secrets that should have stayed buried start to surface. Each of them knows something they don’t want to share but no one can keep a secret and the four of them are determined to piece together what factor drove them apart and the one thing each of them wished had gone in a different direction.There was jealousy, manipulation, and some strange behavior but did any of that make the night of storm less real and more imagined?This book took me completely by surprise. Not that I did not think I was going to like the book as I am a Laura Lippman fan, but that she had taken her writing in a different direction. This book is gripping, suspenseful and feels too real for comfort but you can’t put it down. Childhood stories are usually told as happy and wonderful times which is the white-washed version we remember, but when you peel back the layer what you find is not quite as innocent as we thought it was. My only objection was with some loose ends that did not get tied up enough for me but I am a close the book, close the story, and not have questions type of reader.

I generally avoid authors whose m.o. involves writing multiple books centered around one main character. Our local library seems to love Laura Lippman, who I remembered focuses her attention on the detective Tess Monaghan in most of her novels. This was sitting forlornly in the "New Releases" bin...saw in the jacket blurb that this was a "stand-alone" novel (meaning, I guess, no Tess Monaghan) so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm glad I did; "The Most Dangerous Thing", while having not exactly the most original concept in the mystery genre, still managed to keep me interested throughout it, and exemplified Ms. Lippman's creative talent by taking a rather old and hackneyed plot device (the old "Something BAD Happens to a Group of Friends in Their Childhood...See How They Make it to Adulthood" device) and making it her own (uniquely told) story. An obvious surface comparison of her style could be made to that of Dennis Lehane's (given both convey a strong sense of place: Lehane's Boston- vs. Lippman's Baltimore-centricity, for starters) but it would be like comparing apples to oranges (or...ahem...Fenway Park to Camden Yards). Her novel starts with the tragic event (in this case, the murky circumstances surrounding a pentad of childhood friends' encounter with a homeless man during their explorations of vast Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park in Baltimore.) Ms. Lippman lets the mystery surrounding this event burble and percolate under the surface for a while, then fast-forwards to the present, predictably, to gauge how the friends have dealt with this event in their adult lives. She then, quite unpredictably, turns the mystery upon itself again as the parents of the kids in question are examined with fine-toothed detail. Suddenly the mystery transforms itself into a fantastically moving (yet broody and somber) multi-generational exhibition of family dynamics. Her characterizations are sharp, indelible, vivid portraits of the three extended families in question (again, with the sordid mystery kinda bubbling in the background, shaping and defining the characters from afar, sotto voce).It's probably a good thing that this off-kilter, ever-so-slightly warped mystery shifted gears: the mystery itself (and its resolution) is arguably the weakest part of the novel. It feels like a old retread wheeled out on shiny chrome wheels. I do applaud Ms. Lippman's effort; even though it seemed all-too-familiar, the story never failed to keep my attention riveted, thanks to Ms. Lippman's genre-upheaval and overall peculiar (in a good way) writing style. I intend to explore some of her other stand-alone titles to see if they're similarly compelling. (***Spoiler Alert***) (though a teensy tiny one:) for those of you who can't get enough of Ms. Lippman's Tess Monaghan P.I. character, fear not...she makes an interesting cameo appearance...(***Side Note for those who've already read this: did you notice how, in the flashback sequences in the first section, called "US", the narration was provided by an Omniscient First Person, someone who was a spokesperson for the collective of five friends, but was, in fact, none of the five friends? (though consistently using the "collective we", indicating the narrator was indeed one of the friends, but by process of elimination, couldn't possibly have been one of the five main friends.) Given that Ms. Lippman indicates in the end Acknowledgments this is her most autobiographical novel to date, I'm wondering: who is this mystery 6th friend? Ms. Lippman herself? Quite intriguing, indeed.)

You know how in Stand By Me (and the story it's based on, The Body), the narrator says something about how we never have friends as good as the friends we have in childhood?* In this novel, that's a really good thing.Gwen, Mickey, Tim, Sean and Gordon ("Go-Go") are friends. They explore this giant forest that's behind Gwen's house (this is in the long-ago time when kids were allowed to do things without parental supervision) most of the summer and one day, they find a man who lives in a ramshackle cabin**. Something happens and then the kids don't hang out anymore. Years later when they're grownups, Gordon dies (possibly suicide, possibly an accident) and the other four need to finally discuss and come to terms with what happened that night.This is such a hard book to discuss because it's very Usual Suspects in the way that we only get the truth a bit at a time. (Obviously, I guess, as this is a mystery.) This is a huge departure from her general style, but it's really good. Especially if you can have patience and let the narrative unfold. :)Recommended.In the interest of full disclosure, I know Laura and while I do think of her as "one of my favorite writers, Laura Lippman" and not "my friend Laura," it's probably best to point that out. (At my last job, I used to produce a community news/events show and she was gracious enough to come on twice. And the first time, I think it was literally only my second or third show producing and I didn't know what I was doing. And she still sent me the sweetest email a day or two later. AND she came back a year later---I was much better then.)* = " I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"** = I pictured Rustin Parr in The Blair Witch Project

It was Victor Hugo who said no one keeps a secret so well as a child. That may be, but in this stunning new stand-alone novel Laura Lippman explores the psychological cost of such concealment.The death of a childhood friend reunites four people and rips open a Pandora’s box, unleashing disturbing questions about an incident from their past.Lippman deftly takes the reader back and forth in time, detailing how the participants met in the 1970s as children, the incident that separated them and the facts of their present life in the first part of the novel. A second segment outlines the character and lives of their parents and how the incident impacted their lives. The final section deals with the revelation of secrets they have kept, both as individuals and a group. Those familiar with the environs of Baltimore will recognize many of the places and neighborhoods depicted here.And, though this is a stand-alone, those who love her will be pleased Tess Monaghan, Lippman’s private detective from her popular series, does get a cameo appearance which has a pivotal role in this novel.

This was good. Pretty much blew me away. Had real difficulty putting it down. Always a good sign. And some real twists and turns. Multiple narrattors - first person plural. We also bounce backwards and forwards in time. Five kids in a neighborhood. Three brothers, two neighborhood girls. A 5 pointed star - with the center being held by a fellow living in a shack in the woods - they call him Chicken George.In the Afterword, Lippman notes that she did use the neighborhood she grew up in. Why not? It is the one you know best for the rest of your life. At one point, early on, Gwen realizes that she has no best friend now - not like she did then. Before the innocence is lost, there is no need for artifice. I've seen some of that going to a high school reunion and meeting up with the old crew. Hanging out at the old drive-in, etc.

I haven't read any other reviews of this book here. It's usual for me to avoid reviews after reading and really enjoying a book, but I do note the average rating of 3.30 (at the time of this review) as being pretty low. I would take a wild guess that at least some of that has to do with how the auth

I associate Laura Lippman with mysteries, and I was expecting this book to fall somewhere in the mystery/thriller genre.It doesn't, not really. Yes, there is a death (and exactly what happened is murky), and people trying to deal with what happened shapes the lives of the 5 kids (and associated parents) involved, but that's just one part of the story.This is a story of friendships and how they change, and how who you are as a child can affect the rest of your life.It's an extremely character centered book, spread among many characters. This leads to a complex, textured story that may not get as much depth as I would have liked with any given character. All of the characters were interesting. None of them were entirely likeable, but that can make for good reading.The book features changing points of view-- including one that I encountered for the first time in The Weird Sisters. I'm sure it has a name, but it's a collective "we" referring to a group POV. Each character is referred to individually, but the general narration in these sections is from them together. Most of the book is third person, focusing on a changing set of characters, taken from those involved with the death of a man the five children knew. The book jumps between their childhood and adult years, after the youngest of them dies in a car crash.It was fascinating to get the view of their childhood friendship from so many perspectives, both at the time and years later, and to see how it shaped each of them as they became adults.As a fun side note, Tess Monaghan (the detective from Lippman's long running series) makes a cameo appearance in this book. I've only read a few of the books featuring her, and it took me a little while to place the name.I was absorbed in this book the whole way through, and the end packed quite a punch-- I'm not sure that I liked it, but it really made an impression. I'd love to discuss it with others that read the book, and see what they thought.

The new standalone novel from Laura Lippman was, to this reader, unlike anything this wonderful author had written to this point. [Among her more recent ones, "I’d Know You Anywhere" and “What the Dead Know” still stand out in my memory and resonate with me.] The present work is not really a mystery [although there is a death early on in the book] nor procedural, but instead a series of in-depth character studies which will be difficult to match.The author takes her time recreating and juxtaposing scenes from the past with those of the present, from the time when “everything was perfect until the moment it wasn’t,” in the lives of five youngsters in their early teens, three brothers and two young girls. Ultimately each of these, along with their parents and siblings and extended families, will have their own chapters, describing events which took place in 1980, in their native Baltimore, with p.o.v. changes from one character to another and from those early years to the present time, when most of them have grown children of their own, all of it shaped by one pivotal ‘incident’ [insert your own euphemism] which changes all of their lives forever. The reality of the events of that night is different for each of them, children and parents alike. And ultimately it is about secrets kept, or not. One of the three brothers, Gordon (“Go-Go”) Halloran, nine years old in 1980 and always the most reckless of the three, although presently two years sober, leaves the bar at which he has just fallen off the wagon and does not make it home alive, crashing into a wall at about 100 mph. There is a question about whether it was a tragic accident, or something somehow worse. I found this book [in which, btw, Tess Monaghan makes a cameo appearance] a departure for this author, and very thought-provoking. I suspect it too will stay in my memory for a long while. Parenthetically, I loved Ms. Lippman’s description of one perpetually angry character who, when counting to ten, started at nine. But there are many memorable moments, and personalities, here.Recommended.

This is a strange book. A perverse book. But it's also a really good book.I love Laura Lippman, and actually just interviewed her on my blog about what it was like for her writing her first novel. I'll publish it on or after Aug 20th, but as a run up to that, I'm reading alot of her work.This is her most recent. In it, are two groups of people/friends, who've grown up together. The children, and their parents. I'm not going to say much about the story, because it's a slippery slope. You really need to read it. But once again, Laura Lippman explores this idea of memory and perception, and how we make things in our mind's eye sometimes.And to be a writer nerd, she uses first person plural, which is both unnerving and so goddamned readable and interesting once you get into it.But i think the best part, is how she illuminates the darkly winding road of life. That is to say, nothing every really goes the way we think it will, or turns out as expected. I love the power of that in stories, because its the genuine unexpected that is realer than real.Everyone likes to say that Laura Lippman gets better, which IS a compliment, but also just too simple for a writer as interesting as her. What I mean is, she is doing crime fiction and thrillers against a social tapestry that is hauntingly real and funny and sad, and I think it's what makes her stuff so damn readable.Next up, I think I'm going to review the kindle set of Heloise stories, which is the central character of her new novel, AND WHEN SHE WAS GOOD.Best,EC(spoiler)ps - this novel also has a brilliant cameo by Tess Monaghan - just sayin'..