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Read The Last Place (2015)

The Last Place (2015)

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3.8 of 5 Votes: 2
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ISBN
0752842595 (ISBN13: 9780752842592)
Language
English
Publisher
orion

The Last Place (2015) - Plot & Excerpts

re-read february, 2011: I LOVE CARL. oh man, he broke my heart a million times over. and so did lousia o'neal, and oh, just so many. it was really sad. oh, CARL. and i totally get why tess just wanted to screw crow sometimes. the fact that nothing is random. the poor women. the doctor. dottie. mostly, though, carl. *first read: june 17, 2008i feel kind of wrong classifying lippman with the other trashy thrillers - she's not particularly trashy, though she does write thrillers. this book, this book broke my heart. it tied up loose ends that i worried would make it the end of the series (despite knowing that there are books after it already published). i loved the difference in tess this time around - the court-mandated anger management, the lack of tyner and kitty, even crow and whitney - not to mention the dogs (i am so happy they kept miata!). normally this would bother me, but somehow it fit the story perfectly - tess is growing up in ways we haven't seen before, and she had to do a lot of it alone. i loved the return of luisa o'neal, because i knew she would have to come back some day, and the way she did made me - much like tess - hate her and pity her at the same time. i liked the brief interludes from the killer's perspective. i liked seeing more of maryland than just baltimore, and i loved sensing tess's relief at coming home, but her wariness as well. the final twist scene is really . . . i don't want to spoil anything, but it changes tess forever, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. and damn, carl dewitt grew on me like dandelions on newly planted lawn. i almost am afraid of what will happen to tess next, and i wonder if we'll be able to see the fallout. once again, i am so glad i am reading these in order. once again, i want to go to baltimore and eat some crab. once again, i love tess and her world and everyone in it, and i can't wait to get started on the next one.

#7 Tess Monaghan mystery set in Baltimore. Whitney, Tess's good friend, sends some work her way from a consortium of non-profits that she is on the board of. They're researching police techniques in the rural areas around the city in hopes of finding some fuel for their fire: more funding for domestic violence prevention. If they can prove that the rural police messed up and need more education, they hope to lobby the legislature for the funding. They hand Tess five unrelated, unsolved homicides from the outlying areas and ask her to see how they were investigated. What ends up happening is that the cases aren't quite as unrelated as they thought. Tess hooks up with a former cop out on disability who had obsessed over one of the cases, and they are allowed to assist the state police peripherally when they bring the evidence of the serial killer to them.I have to admit that the mystery itself was rather easy to figure out--the clues were just dangled in front of you and I kept wanting to smack Tess because she didn't see certain things. Then again, she was a bit distracted--having had to go into court-ordered anger-management therapy after she (and Whitney, although Tess never implicated her friend) tracked down a guy who seduced Whitney's teenage niece in an internet chat room. (Apparently the use of Nair on the entire body warrants assault. LOL) Still a very enjoyable visit with Tess and Crow, the dogs and her friends, even though I was at least two steps ahead of them all the way. And I think I'm finally getting used to the narrator's (Barbara Rosenblatt) voice, which I found annoying as hell at first.

What do You think about The Last Place (2015)?

Wow. Simply wow. Laura Lippman is an amazing writer whose work just keeps getting better. If the next book in this series follows in this pattern it must be mythic, because it's hard to believe this book could be improved upon. Lippman experiments a bit with her style in this book by including passages from the killer's perspective. It makes the killer both more human and infinitely more scary! Now some generalities about the plot (with minimal spoilers I promise.) This book ties up just about all the "loose ends" of the previous six books, reaching all the way back to the first. The book starts with Tess in court ordered therapy, and by the end of the book I think she actually needs it. Tess has always been a relatable character, but by the end of this novel my heart was breaking for her. Unlike many literary PI/cop characters she reacts the way I think most people would to witnessing violence and multiple deaths, she slowly breaks down. While I consider the ending of this book to be a good one, it is not happy, and I applaud Lippman's bravery for that. Even with the sad ending I can't wait to read the next book. Which just proves that sad endings aren't always bad endings! Now for a very smaller spoiler, so stop reading if you'd like. I'm happy to announce that the killer does not turn out to be one of the minor characters. In my opinion, this is a weak plot device, and was one of the very few problems I had with In A Strange City.
—Laura

**edited 01/24/14There's nothing more satisfying than a clichéd plot that is done well enough to be elevated to something more significant.In the detective noir genre, there's nothing more chlichéd than a serial killer, and The Last Place is Lippman's obligatory serial killer book. It starts out with a scene that, with another author, might be treated as a joke. Lippman's private investigator protagonist, Tess Monaghan, at her friend Whitney's instigation, tricks a wannabe pedophile into taking his own date rape drugs and then denudes him of his hair with a few well-placed squirts of Nair. But the reason why I respect Lippman as a writer is that in her world, actions have consequences. Although Tess (and the narrator) initially present these actions as humorous, Tess quickly ends up with felony charges and court-mandated anger management therapy. Whitney, characteristically not particularly apologetic for her part in the escapade, tries to make amends by presenting Tess with what should be an easy case to solve. Of course, Whitney's case turns out to be more than it seems, and Tess is pulled into a game in which she is both the hunter and the prey for a serial killer.So why, then, is this the first Laura Lippman book I've ever given a 5 to? The only thing more chlichéd than a serial killer is a serial killer who goes after a bevy of beautiful women, starts to fixate on the detective, and provides snippets of chapters from his own viewpoint. While The Last Place is indeed all of those things, it is yet something more. It is a book about symmetry and consequences. ...Due to my disapproval of GR's new and highly subjective review deletion policy, I am no longer posting full reviews here.The rest of this review can be found on Booklikes.
—Carly

This is another Tess Monaghan novel set in Baltimore about a private investigator. Tess is asked to research how the police handled five homicides, and during this investigation she uncovers the work of a serial killer. The story interweaves past encounters that Tess had with Luisa O'Neal and ex-boyfriend Jonathan. One of my favorite lines are : You couldn't bargain or barge your way into immortality, like some desperate fleeing the Titanic, holding a child in his arms. You had to believe in something first. The only thing Tess honestly believed was that she was scared of dying." So why does Tess constantly court death? Lippman does wonders with the scenery and characters of Baltimore, and Tess's anger at life and her sense of loyality to Whitney and Luisa O'Neal.
—Debbie Maskus

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