I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

Once upon a time (or in 1985), there was a 15-year-old girl named Elizabeth.  She loved Madonna and thought her parents were mean to tell her she couldn't dye her hair or spend all her time at the mall or at the Roy Rogers on Route 40 (she could easily cut through the woods to get there).  So, she put on her fingerless lace gloves, her bouffant black skirt over leggings and her black ankle boots and took a walk.  It was a bad decision, for on that walk she saw a man with a shovel.   The man helped her cross the creek, but after she got on the other side, he grabbed her hands and took her with him....for 39 days.

Laura Lippman has written a successful mystery series, set in Baltimore, along with several stand alone novels.  I'd Know You Anywhere is the latest of her books, and it is a definite winner, full of twists and turns and escalating psychological suspense.

Eliza Benedict has a nice, ordinary life with her husband, Peter, and their two children, Iso and Albie.  They have recently moved back to the area where Eliza grew up after having lived in London for several years.  Soon afterward, a letter is delivered to their new home addressed to Eliza.  It begins, "Dear Elizabeth, I'm sure this is a shock, although that's not my intention, to shock you...".  The letter is from Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped Eliza when she was 15 and held her for almost 6 weeks, the man who killed another girl, maybe more, the man who is on death row for raping and murdering that other girl, the man who has now found Eliza and who wants to talk to her.

Albie put his hand in hers, as if the walk to the kitchen were a journey of miles.  She wished it were, that he would stay this age for three, four years, then be nine for a decade or so, then spend another ten years being ten.  But onetime graduate student of children's literature that she was, she knew there was no spell, no magic, that could keep a child a child, or shield a child from the world at large.  In fact, that was where the trouble almost always began, with a parent trying to outthink fate.  Stay on the path.  Don't touch the spindle.  Don't speak to strangers.  Don't pick the rose.

I'd Know You Anywhere was hard for me to put down.  It is a character study of a woman who has endured so much trauma in her younger years, but has now replaced that horror with normality and structure.  And yet, how can she be normal?  Eliza was a fascinating person, hard to know at first, but as the narrative progressed, more and more facets emerged.  In fact, there were many vivid characters included in the story, from Iso, Eliza's teenage daughter, to Trudy, the mother of another of victim, and Barbara, the woman who facilitates Walter's contact with Eliza.

The story is told from various points of view and goes back and forth from the present day to 1985, as more and more of Eliza's kidnapping story is revealed.  There is quite a lot of discussion of the death penalty and the author presents arguments for, against, and also in between.  She left it to her readers to come to conclusions on their own on that issue.  I found a few of the characters annoying, but I think they were meant to be.  The kidnapping sections are almost surreal, but I found them quite gripping.  All in all, a very good read that should appeal to crime novel lovers as well as people who enjoy a good psychological suspense story.  I'm planning on searching out Laura Lippman's backlist and settling in for a good time.

I want to thank Trish of TLC Book Tours for making sure I got a copy of this book and allowing me to be a part of this blog tour.  Check out the other stops here.