Butchers Hill (1998)

In Book Three of the Tess Monaghan Detective Series, twenty-nine year old Tess has finally opened her own office as a private investigator in the so-called “Butchers Hill” section of Baltimore. As its name suggests, Butchers Hill was once home to butchers and poultry preparers, but obviously the name also lends itself nicely to a description of criminals whenever any murders are committed in the neighborhood.

Tess has her initial two clients on the same morning. The first is a 66-year-old neighborhood black man known as Luther “the Butcher” Beale, who had served prison time after he shot at a group of taunting young kids and one of the boys died. He tells Tess he wants her to find the other kids, so he can help the remaining children out as an act of “retribution.” This will be tough; the kids were foster children, and Luther doesn’t even know their names.

Tess’s second client seems to present an easier task. The well-dressed young black woman asks her to find an estranged sister named Susan King.

Tess runs into a number of problems, not the least of which is that both of her clients have hidden agendas. Moreover, she has trouble getting information from blacks who won’t talk to a white woman. She has to delve into the matter of shady adoption businesses, and then there are all those dead bodies of people related to the two cases that keep piling up…

Discussion:

Lippman seems more relaxed in this third book of her Tess Monaghan series. Tess’s sense of humor is coming out more, as is her obsession with food – apparently the character used to have an eating disorder, and there is some question as to whether it is actually gone. And in fact, her waxing rhapsodic over Baltimore’s Berger cookies struck a familiar chord, as my husband has been hearing me do that for years. Her disquisition on eating peanuts in the shell is right on:

"Have you ever noticed how, in every batch of peanuts you eat, there’s one that’s almost perfect?’ she asked, opening a triple pod. ‘It’s roasted a little darker than the rest, has an almost piquant flavor. So you eat dozens more, looking for one that has that same strong, roasted flavor and instead, you find one that’s acrid and shriveled, which cancels out the perfect one, so you eat dozens more, trying to regain your equilibrium, and next thing you know you have peanut belly, all swollen and bloated, and you still haven’t found that elusive, perfect peanut.”

Much of the humor is related to the character's history as a literature major in college. When her Uncle Donald introduces her to a source who prefers to remain anonymous as “Mr. Mole,” she had me laughing out loud at her response:

"’What, are we playing Wind in the Willows all of the sudden?’ Tess asked. ‘Dibbs on being Mr. Toad.’”

Evaluation: The Tess Monoghan series is quite entertaining. This particular book won the Agatha and Anthony awards. I love the setting and supporting cast, and look forward to finding out what happens next with Tess’s life. ( )

Tess Monaghan has finally made the move and hung out her shingle as a PI-for-hire, complete with an office in Butchers Hill. Maybe it's not the best address in Baltimore, but you gotta start somewhere and Tess' greyhound Esskay has no trouble taking marathon naps anywhere there's a roof. Then, in walks Luther Beale, the notorious vigilante who five years ago shot a boy for vandalizing his car. Just out of prison, he says he wants to make reparations to the kids who witnessed his crime, so he needs Tess to find them. But once she starts snooping, the witnesses start dying. ( )

I have become a Laura Lippman addict. I first heard Laura Lippman being interviewed on the Marc Steiner Show on what was then Baltimore's WJHU radio station, at John's Hopkins University. (It's called WYPR now and is no longer owned by the University) I found her to be engaging and was motivated to go read the new novel she was hawking and then every Laura Lippman book I could lay my hands on ever since.

Butchers Hill is an early Lippman novel that was published in paperback only, in 1998. It has recently been released in hard cover, reversing the usual procedure. One might expect an early attempt to be less well written, more tentative, not as good as an author's later work, especially if that early book was a paperback only potboiler. This is not the case. The character of Tess Monaghan is fully rounded already, and easily recognizable. The plot has twists and turns of great complexity, yet complete, after the fact, logic. Other characters are believable. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Baltimore is a city that I know mostly from the local TV news. I live in another world, across the Chesapeake Bay from there. But I love to see places and even people from that news appearing in print. If there is a writer who lives and sets novels in your area you may be able to enjoy the same experience. Of course, I also enjoy reading the late Tony Hillerman's New Mexico based novels for their setting, even though my exposure to New Mexico was only a two week vacation almost twenty years ago. Go figure.


You will never in a million years guess who done it, which makes this a real mystery and not just a "crime novel." In fact, it's not at all clear what the real crime that is being solved is until the denouement, but not in a bad plot kind of way.

Since starting to write fiction, with her Tess Monaghan mysteries, Laura Lippman has written novels that are not in the mystery genre. She has shown that she can develop complex characters and hold a reader's interest without having the plot device of a detective with a crime to solve. Yet, her Tess stories, even this early one, already stand up as complete novels on their own.

I'll Never Forget The Day I Read A Book!

Tess Monaghan has finally hung out her shingle but her new office is not in the best area of Baltimore. On one of her first days in operation, Tess has two new clients - Jackie and Luther Beale. Jackie wants to hire Tess to find the daughter she gave up for adoption 13 years ago. Luther Beale, known as the Butcher of Butcher's Hill wants to find five children who were friends of the boy he was convicted of killing. He wants to make restitution. Both cases appear pretty straight forward but they turn out to be far from it.
Jackie's case brings Tess face to face with facts that may be hard for her to reconcile emotionally and Luther case gets a bit dangerous. I found it interesting the way that the story was woven together even though they were separate cases.
It was a bit slow in some spots, but overall an interesting combination. I still enjoy seeing the references of my hometown , though listening on audio, I tend to want to correct the pronunciations at times. ( )

Third in a series about Tess Monaghan. A man who spent time in jail for shooting a young boy, one of five kids stealing and trashing his place comes to Tess to find the other kids who were there that night. He tells her he wants to give them money; as foster kids they haven't had a good life. But things get hairy when those other kids start turning up dead.

Good read. ( )