In Big Trouble by Laura Lippman

Baltimore Blues
Charm City
Butchers Hill

The fourth novel in the Tess Monaghan series, In Big Trouble, is a little different than the previous books. She gets a newspaper clipping in the mail that has a photo of her ex-boyfriend and the words "In Big Trouble." Pretty soon she's tracking down her ex's parents and heading off to San Antonio to find her ex-boyfriend, Crow.  Since Baltimore is a pretty major character in the previous novels, it was sort of disappointing to me to be thrust into Texas, but I liked how Lippman really let us feel like we were visitors. Tess's enjoyment of "real" Tex-Mex food, her befuddlement with the layout of the city, and her lack of understanding of ubiquitous Spanish phrases really show her fish out of water position in a subtle way.

I also like how Lippman builds off of Tess's relationships throughout these novels. We had met Crow before and witnessed Tess cruelly breaking up with him. So this was really an interesting way to delve more deeply into that relationship. We also meet some new characters who are fun in their own way, from the Vietnamese lady who runs the hotel where Tess is staying who watches Spanish soap operas to the owner of a shop that sells trinkets and magic.  Tess also contacts a reporter who she had previously worked with in Charm City and I like the continuity of the series.

There are some things I don't care for, though. There are a lot of loose ends. Tess seems very immature for thirty. She's constantly harping on about how old she is and getting insulted when people think she's younger than she is. Her romantic relationships end up playing out like I would expect someone in their early 20s to have. She's constantly feeding her dog people food and does not care for it. Maybe that's just how she is, but it doesn't seem realistic to me since she's a business owner who otherwise has her shit together. 

There are also a number of loose ends in this book. Without giving away any spoilers, I'll say that I still don't understand the event that precipitated every other event in the book.  It's not that big a deal, I guess, but I don't think Sue Grafton would have ever left me hanging!

All of those criticisms aside, these are such fun books! I love reading about PIs before smartphones and googles and easy to access newspaper databases. It's fun to read about the criss cross telephone/address directory and it's fun to think about how unwilling Tess is to use her super expensive, every minute counts cell phone. It's just a way to be transported back into time and work on a puzzle without every single piece being easy to find. 

I'll definitely be reading more of Lippman, but I've got quite a long list of reading to do in 2020, so it might be a bit.