What the Dead Know

By: Laura Lippman

Narrated by: Linda Emond

Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

Thirty years ago, two sisters disappeared from a shopping mall. Their bodies were never found, and those familiar with the case have always been tortured by these questions: How do you kidnap two girls? Who or what could have lured the two sisters away from a busy mall on a Saturday afternoon without leaving behind a single clue or witness?

Now a clearly disoriented woman involved in a rush-hour hit-and-run claims to be the younger of the long-gone Bethany sisters. But her involuntary admission and subsequent attempt to stonewall investigators only deepens the mystery. Where has she been, why has she waited so long to come forward? Could her abductor truly be a beloved Baltimore cop? There isn't a shred of evidence to support her story, and every lead she gives the police seems to be another dead-end: a dying, incoherent man; a razed house; a missing grave; and a family that disintegrated long ago, torn apart not only by the crime but by the fissures the tragedy revealed in what appeared to be the perfect household.

In a story that moves back and forth across the decades, there is only one person who dares to be skeptical of a woman who wants to claim the identity of one Bethany sister without revealing the fate of the other. Will he be able to discover the truth?

©2007 Laura Lippman (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Edgar-winner Lippman...shows she's as good as Peter Abrahams and other A-list thriller writers with this outstanding stand-alone." (Publishers Weekly)
"An uncommonly clever impostor story, so cagily constructed that it easily fulfills the genre's two basic demands. First, Ms. Lippman is able to keep her reader guessing about the main character's disputed identity until the very end of this book. Second, when the revelation comes, it makes perfect sense, and it has been hiding in plain sight. This is not one of those mysteries with a denouement that feels tacked on, half baked or pulled out of thin air." (The New York Times)

Kinda slow

It moves kind of slow and the conclusion was anticlimactic. The narrator was great though.

I kept falling asleep

I had a hard time knowing who was talking and what time frame I was in. The narrator is not objectionable, but her voice is very monotonous and I found myself drifting off from time to time. Either the narrator's tone or the author's writing style created emotional distance from the story so that I never really became involved with any of the characters. I found both the detective and the central character (I'm not sure whether to call her 'Heather' or 'Sunny' or the victim or the perpetrator) very off putting. The detective's continual assessment of every female he met for her sexual desirability was repellent, and the protratonist's constant lying made me unsure of her likability. The ending was all wrapped up satisfactorily, almost too pat. Hence three stars. Even though I was struggling to get involved there was something that kept me going, but I'm not sure if it was the desire to see the end or the money I spent on the book! Perhaps others will like it better than I did.

What a twist!

This book was excellent. It was a perfect blend of the past and the present. Great description and I never saw the end coming. Caught me completely off guard. First book I've ever read by this author but will read more and hope they're all as good as this one.

Good enough

I enjoyed listening to it. It took some effort to keep track of all the characters, but the narrator did a good job. I had been predicting the ending since the first disk, but it was still pretty satisfying.

OK But Not Her Best

Would you try another book from Laura Lippman and/or Linda Emond?

I love Laura Lippman and have later works. This was an earlier work and showed how much her skill as a writer has evolved in the later works. I enjoyed this but didn't love it. The story seemed clumsy at times and the twist became evident about half way through. I did enjoy this but was aware of how much better her later books are.

Would you recommend What the Dead Know to your friends? Why or why not?

Probably would recommend later works "And When She Was Good" and/or "The Most Dangerous Thing".

only issue is the production

the story was good and the narrator was good. my only issue was the actual production of the book. they had little musical interludes in between random chapters instead of at the different parts of the book and I found it really distracting.

outside of that the book and the narration were pretty good.

Ho Hum

This book was promising, but none of the characters is ever more than superficially developed, and the back story meanders for too long, failing to deliver on the promised plot twist. The big reveal is an anticlimax.
The narrator was excellent, but the book—not so much.

Repeated the last two chapters?

Good story line, wasted 20 minutes of a repeat of the last two chapters. Thought something was going to come of it, nope.

Good story, a few problems with the audio

Enjoyable suspenseful tale. The last couple of chapters are mistakenly repeated in the audiobook. Also, I could have done without the music, which startled me in between chapters as I wasn't expecting it. The writing was pretty good, as was the narration. Nothing stellar, but certainly held my attention, and the ending was a good twist.

Plot twist

I really enjoyed the story in the plot twist near the end. The last two or three chapters of the audiobook actually repeat a couple of the previous chapters so when you get to the end it's going to seem like it starts in the middle