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Summary
Summary
Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2018 by Bustle, Popsugar, Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Seattle Times, Book Riot, LitHub, BookPage, and Paperback Paris.
"Every time Laura Lippman comes out with a new book, I get chills because I know I am back in the hands of the master. She is simply a brilliant novelist, an unflinching chronicler of life in America right now, and Sunburn is her dark, gleaming noir gem. Read it." -Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl
New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman returns with a superb novel of psychological suspense about a pair of lovers with the best intentions and the worst luck: two people locked in a passionate yet uncompromising game of cat and mouse. But instead of rules, this game has dark secrets, forbidden desires, inevitable betrayals--and cold-blooded murder.
One is playing a long game. But which one?
They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he's also passing through. Yet she stays and he stays--drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other--dangerous, even lethal, secrets.
Then someone dies. Was it an accident, or part of a plan? By now, Adam and Polly are so ensnared in each other's lives and lies that neither one knows how to get away--or even if they want to. Is their love strong enough to withstand the truth, or will it ultimately destroy them?
Something--or someone--has to give.
Which one will it be?
Inspired by James M. Cain's masterpieces The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce, Sunburn is a tantalizing modern noir from the incomparable Laura Lippman.
Author Notes
Laura Lippman grew up in Baltimore and returned to her home town in 1989 to work as a journalist. After writing seven books while still a full-time reporter, she left the Baltimore Sun to focus on fiction.
Laura is the author of What the Dead Know, 2016 New York Times Bestseller, Another Thing to Fall, After I'm Gone, and Wilde Lake. She also writes the Tess Monaghan series. She has won numerous awards for her work including the Edgar, Quill, Anthony, Nero Wolfe, Agatha, Gumshoe, Barry, and Macavity.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in Delaware in 1995, this scorching tale of the gray area between betrayal, lust, and murder from Edgar-winner Lippman (Wilde Lake) will resonate with fans of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. When Polly Costello walks out on her husband and young daughter during their beach vacation, she gets as far as Belleville, a town with a main drag and not much else, except the High-Ho diner, where she lands a job waitressing, at least for now. Enter Adam Bosk, who knows more than he's telling-of course, so does Polly-but who can cook a mean burger. Soon Polly and Adam, who is exactly the kind of inquisitive guy a woman with secrets should avoid, are dancing around a relationship when Polly's checkered past-another husband, insurance money, and now a suspicious death in Belleville-comes crawling back. Lippman ratchets up the suspense the way the mercury in a thermometer creeps up on a hot August day, until everything-Polly's carefully laid plans of revenge and redemption, Adam's part in her potential downfall-comes to a boiling point. This is Lippman at her observant, fiercest best, a force to be reckoned with in crime fiction. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A redheaded waitress, a good-looking private eye, insurance fraud, arson, rough sex, and a long hot summer: some like it noir.With her 23rd novel, Lippman (Wilde Lake, 2016, etc.) pays tribute to a literary predecessor who, like her, began his study of crime as a journalist at the Baltimore SunJames M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. Lippman's version of the sexy stranger passing through town starts with Polly Costello (that's one of her names, anyway) on a beach vacation in Fenwick, Delaware, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter, Jani. One morning she says she needs a break from the sun, then grabs her duffel and heads down the road. "What kind of woman walks out on her family? Gregg knows. The kind of woman he picked up in a bar four years ago precisely because she had that kind of wildcat energy.She scratched, she bit, she was up for anything, anywhere, anytime." Actually, poor Gregg, suddenly a single dad, doesn't know the half of it. Someone who does have a much fuller picture of Polly's background is Adam, a good-looking, Oberlin- and culinary-institute-educated fellow she runs into at a bar her first day on the lam. Neither Adam nor Polly is candid about what has brought them to stools at the High-Ho, but both stick around and get jobs there, as chef and waitress. By the time their connection in the bedroom blossoms into something more serious, the skeletons in the closet have been joined by fresh new ones. Lippman's trademark is populating a whodunit with characters so believably complicated that they don't need the mystery to carry the book. If that's not quite the case here, you can tell how much fun the author had updating the classic noir tropes, and it's contagious. Plotty, page-turning pleasure plus instructions on how to make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich and how to stab a man in the heart. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* It's no coincidence that the books of James M. Cain get a shout-out in Lippman's new novel. This story about a bad girl and the man who falls in love with her could easily be set in the 1940s or '50s (it's actually set in the mid-'90s). Our lovers meet in a small Delaware town; she's a customer at a restaurant-slash-bar, and he's sitting a couple of stools over. They make small talk, lightly flirtatious banter, and they wind up sharing an attraction. But here's the thing: the bad girl, who calls herself Polly, has a past. And their meeting is no chance encounter; the man (it's tempting to call him a patsy), Adam, has followed her to this small town. Why? For whom is Adam working? What secrets is Polly keeping hidden away? Lippman answers these questions, and several more besides, but in an especially tantalizing manner, parceling out information slowly, a bit here, a bit there, letting us spend some time processing a new revelation before dropping another one on us. Ingeniously constructed and extremely suspenseful, the novel keeps us guessing right up until its final moments. Lippman is a popular and dependable writer, and this homage to classic noir showcases a writer at the height of her powers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Lippman's star continues to rise, and her latest is already attracting a lot of buzz. Expect that to grow as the pub date draws closer.--Pitt, David Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, by Nancy MacLean. (Penguin, $18.) MacLean sketches out the six-decade push to protect the wealthy elite from the will of the majority. The architect of this plan was James McGill Buchanan, a political economist who, starting in the mid-1900s, devoted his career to paving the way for a right-wing social movement. BLACK MAD WHEEL, by Josh Malerman. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $15.99.) A rock 'n' roll band, the Danes, is approached by a top military official to help identify a mysterious, but potent, noise: The sound seems able to neutralize any kind of weapon, and even make people disappear. As the story goes to the African desert and beyond, the novel "takes flight in some head-splitting metaphysical directions," Terrence Rafferty wrote here. THE WORLD BROKE IN TWO: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and the Year That Changed Literature, by Bill Goldstein. (Picador, $18.) The year 1922 was pivotal for these modernists. Goldstein makes good use of their correspondence and published material to outline each writer's development and creative blocks, and how their work fit into a broader postwar movement. MOVING KINGS, by Joshua Cohen. (Random House, $17.) David King is a heavyweight in the moving industry in New York, the patriotic, Republican and wealthy owner of a well-known storage company. In a moment of nostalgia, he invites his distant cousin Yoav, fresh from service in Israel's military, to work for him, carrying out the business's ugly side - evicting delinquent tenants and seizing their possessions. The novel and its tensions promise some thematic heft, touching on race, occupation, gentrification and who deserves the right to a home. THE LONG HAUL: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road, by Finn Murphy. (Norton, $16.95.) Murphy has logged hundreds of thousands of miles and decades on the road, but may be an unlikely representative: He falls asleep reading Jane Austen in motels and nurtures a crush on Terry Gross, "probably because I've spent more time with her than anyone else in my life." SUNBURN, by Laura Lippman. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $16.99.) In a sleepy Delaware town, two newcomers - a waitress running from her past and a short-order cook - fall in love, though the two are not what they claim to be. Set in 1995, this novel has an undertow of 1940s noir, but with more heart than you might expect. As our reviewer, Harriet Lane, wrote: "You see the huge red sun sinking into the cornfields; you feel the dew underfoot."
Library Journal Review
After reworking Harper Lee's universe in Wilde Lake, the author gives the star-crossed souls of James M. Cain's fiction the Lippman treatment. Hence, desperate lovers Polly and Adam meet in a sleepy Delaware not-quite-beach town and harbor secrets there and in Baltimore. They circle each other warily, but it's fated they'll end up together. Their affair is threatened by the things they conceal from each other and by enemies lurking all around. Lippman's complicated femme fatale heroine and conflicted hero are more layered than one would expect from noir protagonists, and her nuanced characterizations extend beyond the couple at the center of the story. With an economy of words, she creates three--dimensional characters such as Irving, the man who hires Adam to spy on Polly, Cath, the weak link in a love triangle, and Polly's mother-in-law -Savannah, who's not quite sure she's grandma material. Lippman's minute observations about modern life, human foibles, and the many faces of love are lagniappes to this tasty feast of a novel. VERDICT Just try to read this fantastic stand-alone from the creator of the "Tess Monaghan" series slowly. Modern noir at its best, it will delight old-movie lovers, satisfy suspense readers, and reward Lippman's legion of fans. [See Prepub Alert, 8/14/17.]-Liz French, Library Journal © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.