Lippman is best known as a mystery writer, with a slew of awards and her most recent thriller, 2019′s Lady in the Lake, in development as an Apple+ series to star Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o.
She unexpectedly died days after he closed on a sleek new condo, but he decides to stay awhile, hoping new surroundings will help him get going on a stalled novel and get distance from a recent breakup with a glamorous “shakedown queen” named Margot.
Some she name-checks specifically, from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita to Philip Roth’s Zuckerman Unbound; others are fun to catch sight of fleetingly — is that the shadow of Barton Fink? She even gives Gerry a meta moment when he tries to hire a Baltimore private detective.
But in Gerry’s dreams, or nightmares, or whatever they might be, the ghosts are less likely to wear robes than #MeToo T-shirts.
The first of his three failed marriages crashed because his ex was “so jealous.” So okay, he had sex with a colleague once.
Under the book’s spell, even though I know better than to confuse fiction and reality, I wondered: Could one of them be the person who inspired Gerry Andersen? They all seem so nice, but.