I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE

I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE
Author: Laura Lippman
Copyright August 17, 2010
William Morrow
Harper Collins Publishing
Paperback $ 25.99
ISBN 978-0-06-170655-4
384 pages

When a child has been kidnapped, usually they are killed. Occasionally, one of the kidnapped children manages to live through the harrowing experience. Logically, this victim cannot easily return to their former life. They also are always questioned by the community. Why are they alive? What did they have to do to live? What type of deal did they make with the monster? These lingering questions about why this child survived when others did not continue in the minds of the survivors and the victim’s families.

After spending many years in England, Eliza Benedict moves with her husband and children back to the general area where she lived both before and after she was kidnapped. She left her former life as Elizabeth Lerner behind when her parents moved to a nearby community after her return and the trial. Since that time, she took the name Eliza and was happily hidden by taking her husband’s name and being a full-time mother and housewife. Naturally, it is easier then to live in England, but now her husband’s job has returned them to the states.

Everything seems fairly normal until she is contacted by Walter Bowman, her former kidnapper, who is currently on death row. He wants to talk to her before he dies by lethal injection. He discovered her picture in a publication with her husband. Even though he had been on death row longer than his cell mates, when he saw the picture he immediately recognized Eliza. His comment about the picture, “I’d know you anywhere.”

I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE is Lippman at her best. The tale is haunting with the reader actually in the shoes of Eliza and viewing everything through her eyes. The voice is sincere and the intertwining of the past events with the present was beautifully written. Each page reveals a little more of each character. The pacing is fast and intense.

Laura Lippman has won the Edgar, Quill, Anthony, Nero Wolfe, Agatha, Gumshoe, Shamus, Barry, and the Macavity for her previous novels. This Baltimore native has also worked as a journalist in her home town.

I am always amazed at how each of Lippman’s novels seem better than the previous ones. This is definitely an author that everyone should read as an outstanding mystery writer and to also discover more about humankind. I always look forward to anything written by Laura Lippman.