Throwback Thursday: Charm City by Laura Lippman

Author: Laura Lippman
First published in 1997 by Avon

As a practiced reporter until her newspaper went to that great pressroom in the sky, P.I. Tess Monaghan knows and loves every inch of her native Baltimore, even the parts being slobbered on by the sad-sack greyhound she's minding for her uncle. It's a quirky city where baseball reigns, but lately homicide seems to be the second most popular local sport. Business tycoon "Wink" Wynkowski is trying to change all that by bringing pro basketball back to town, and everybody's rooting for him; until a devastating, muckraking expose of his lurid past appears on the front page of the Baltimore Beacon-Light. It's a surprise even to theBlight's editors, who thought they'd killed the piece. Instead, the piece killed Wink, who's found in his garage with the car running.

Now the Blight wants to nail the unknown computer hacker who planted the lethal story, and the assignment is right up the alley of a former newshound like Tess. But it doesn't take long for her to discover deeper, darker secrets, and to realize that this situation is really more about whacking than hacking. It's just murder in Baltimore these days, and Tess Monaghan herself might be next on the list

Charm City is the second on the Tess Monaghan series.  This time around, Tess is working for her lawyer friend as an investigator.  She is hired by the Baltimore Beacon Light to investigate who ran a story that was not supposed to run.  When the subject of that story dies, the investigation gets more dangerous.

I can't say that I liked this one better than the first.  In fact, I thought it was a little slow.  I was surprised at the solution to the whole thing, so there is that.  I started like Tess a bit more.  I think she is smart and her reporter skills definitely give her an edge.  On a personal level though, I can't say I like her any more than in the last book.  I felt really bad for Crow!  I'll probably give the third book a shot to see if I want to continue with the series.