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)

Great story with a twist.

Great listen! Finished this in a day! Liked all the twists that all came together in the end. Great performance by the narrator.

Warning chapter 40-42 is the same as 43-45

This book was great. I love it! The narrator was awesome, addicting from the first five minutes.

I just wish they would have fixed the double chapters.

A Decent Plot Decried by F-bombs

Ms.Lippman tells a good story, if in a choppy manner. The twist at the end makes one forgive the choppy ride. That being said, it is a shame she is so insistent on a vigorous peppering of F-bombs throughout the stories. They cheapen the story and give it a lack of effort in creation, and indicate a breezing through of the writing rather than an intentional authoring. It is for these reasons that I give the story three stars, rather than the four that the story's plot would deserve.

The Dead Tell A Great Tale

A multi layered, original idea for a story. Loved every minute of it. It was so good that I even listened when chapters 40 through the end repeated for some reason. A great start into the world of Laura Lippman!

Stunning

Well written and beautifully narrated. It may take a bit of careful listening in the beginning to get into the rhythm of the flashback/current time storytelling, but it's well worth the effort. Laura Lippman is an outstanding writer; Linda Emond an excellent narrator. I was hooked into the characters and their stories from the beginning. The only slightly off note, to my mind, was the ending. Believable, but a bit too pat.

Loved it!

Enjoyed this book from the start. It definitely kept my attention. Great plot with plenty of twists and turns. I was curious as to why on chapter 42 ish it repeats itself going back to chapter 40.

Kept in suspense until the last minutes!!

Where does What the Dead Know rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I enjoyed this book because I simply could NOT guess the outcome of the story and just had to keep listening to get to the mystery solution!! A great escape read.

Believable

I like stories with multiple viewpoints, and I enjoyed it here once I let go of trying to keep it all straight as we jumped back and forth in time, and just went with the flow. It builds slowly at first, with progress and information sprinkled in as it moves forward, gradually faster in pace. The ending surprised me and helped me appreciate the author’s skill. A nice epilog that tied up loose endings with all of the main characters. This author knows how to satisfy.

Slightly dated unreliable narrator mystery

This must be from the early days of audiobooks because between some chapters there is suddenly synthetic music that has no bearing on story. The story itself is medium, I definitely wanted to get to the bottom of it. But overall a little tedious-- I listened at 1.5 to get through it faster. Cultural norms also seem a but dated.

Annoying musical interludes

Narrator is ok, story is better. But what is with the random musical interludes? Irritating!