Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: "Charm City" is Laura Lippman's second mystery set in Baltimore. (The other one is "Baltimore Blues.") In this effort, the city is excited about the possible return of professional basketball, and the savior is "Wink" Wynkowski, a business tycoon. The return of basketball is seriously jeopardized when the local paper prints a story detailing Wink's sordid past and current financial problems. Tess Monaghan, who used to be a reporter before her paper folded and who is studying to be a private investigator, is hired to investigate the article. As it turns out, the article was not supposed to have been published, but it seems someone used the newspaper's computers in order to print the story without authorization.There seem to be two prime suspects, and they are the co-authors of the story. One of the two is a friend of Tess, and he seems to have used her as his alibi for the night in question--even though the two were not together. The other co-author is a young and brash reporter with some unsavory journalism techniques. When Wink turns up dead in what appears to be a suicide, the stakes have suddenly gone up, and Tess must worry about her own life. Throughout all of this, she also must deal with the beating of her uncle and the greyhound with bad breath that she cares for while her uncle is in the hospital. When men start tailing her, Tess must watch her every step lest it be her last. "Charm City" fails in many ways. Sadly, it is not well written, and it certainly could have been improved by a good editor. Too often, Ms. Lippman says things she simply does not mean, as, for example, when she uses pronouns carelessly. At other times, the writing is simply bad. The grammar errors are only one problem, though. A more serious one is that the third-person narrator is not honest; Ms. Lippman has not played by the rules of the mystery (though it is not clear at all that the clues are there to begin with). Finally, the protagonist, who praises her own skills at the end of the book, does very little right and by all rights should have died but for a nifty bit of deus ex machina. All in all, "Charm City" is a disappointing effort.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: "Charm City" is Laura Lippman's second mystery set in Baltimore. (The other one is "Baltimore Blues.") In this effort, the city is excited about the possible return of professional basketball, and the savior is "Wink" Wynkowski, a business tycoon. The return of basketball is seriously jeopardized when the local paper prints a story detailing Wink's sordid past and current financial problems. Tess Monaghan, who used to be a reporter before her paper folded and who is studying to be a private investigator, is hired to investigate the article. As it turns out, the article was not supposed to have been published, but it seems someone used the newspaper's computers in order to print the story without authorization. There seem to be two prime suspects, and they are the co-authors of the story. One of the two is a friend of Tess, and he seems to have used her as his alibi for the night in question--even though the two were not together. The other co-author is a young and brash reporter with some unsavory journalism techniques. When Wink turns up dead in what appears to be a suicide, the stakes have suddenly gone up, and Tess must worry about her own life. Throughout all of this, she also must deal with the beating of her uncle and the greyhound with bad breath that she cares for while her uncle is in the hospital. When men start tailing her, Tess must watch her every step lest it be her last. "Charm City" fails in many ways. Sadly, it is not well written, and it certainly could have been improved by a good editor. Too often, Ms. Lippman says things she simply does not mean, as, for example, when she uses pronouns carelessly. At other times, the writing is simply bad. The grammar errors are only one problem, though. A more serious one is that the third-person narrator is not honest; Ms. Lippman has not played by the rules of the mystery (though it is not clear at all that the clues are there to begin with). Finally, the protagonist, who praises her own skills at the end of the book, does very little right and by all rights should have died but for a nifty bit of deus ex machina. All in all, "Charm City" is a disappointing effort.
Rating:
Summary: It's Okay...
Review: ... but nothing special. It sort of reads like a first draft. There are plotholes and inconsistent things that should have been caught and fixed. The writing isn't bad, but it isn't great either. An average read.
Rating: 
Summary: An all-nighter!
Review: After reading Baltimore Blues by Lippman, I was anxious to read Charm City, and hoped that the same vivid descriptions contained in the first book would continue well into the second. I was not disappointed! Again, Ms. Lippman does an excellent job of bringing the wonderful city of Baltimore to life. My husband, a Baltimore native, enjoyed the book as well, stating that it was "just like being home." ENJOY!!!
Rating:
Summary: Very good atmospheric mystery
Review: Baltimore loves business tycoon Wink Wynkowski, the man spearheading the move to bring a professional basketball team back to the city. Ex-reporter turned private investigator Tess Monaghan knows from her friend, Beacon Light reporter Kevin Feeney, that he had the goods on the supposedly squeaky clean businessman, but the town's only paper killed the story. She is shocked to see an expose on Wynkowski on the front page of the next day's paper. Tess learns that management never approved the running of the controversial story. Someone hacked into the newspaper's computer and substituted that story for the one that was supposed to run. Tess is hired to find who the perpetrator is, but before she gets very far into the case, another front page story about Wink's sordid past is run and the man commits suicide. The newspaper remains committed to finding out who sabotaged them. The deeper Tess digs, the more dirt she uncovers, plunging her into a situation that could prove fatal. Laura Lippman follows up on her successful debut novel, BALTIMORE BLUES, with another delicious mystery, CHARM CITY, that showcases the good and bad parts of Ms.Lippman's beloved city. Tess is a charming character who is tough yet vulnerable, and wise enough to know that she does not have all the answers. The sub-plot concerning an unconscious uncle and an adopted grayhound is as fascinating a tale as the main story line because it adds color and complexity to a multi-faceted protagonist. Ms. Lippman is one author to keep an eye on because she appears to have a great writing career ahead of her. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful Baltimore Mystery
Review: Charm City tells a story that moves and engages your attention. There are good (and bad) characters, an intricate plot, and an only-in-Baltimore subplot. There's also all that local lore, described in a way that even the non-Baltimorons in our group appreciated.
Rating:
Summary: A mystery worthy of the Edgar
Review: Charm City, which is a nominee for the 1997 Edgar Award for best paperback original, is one of the top five mysteries I read in the last year. I really connected with Tess Monoghan, a young ex-journalist who is almost grudgingly turning into a private investigator. Just as fascinating are Tess's family and friends: Uncle Spike with his rampant malapropisms, the ravishing bookstore owner Kitty, Crow, a local rock star boyfriend who anybody but Tess would be protective of, and finally Esskay, a greyhound with an astounding capacity for pancakes and love. Charm City's mystery is deftly plotted, with surprising twists and turns and an ending that was richly satisfying. But the thing that puts Charm City at the top of the mystery pile is elegant writing and such a loving rendering of an aged East Coast city that the author would be getting comparisons to literary novelists such as Anne Tyler were the book straight literary fiction. Luckily for us, Lippman chose to write mystery, blending her top-notch talents with a storyline that just won't quit!
Rating:
Summary: Merely Mediocre Mystery
Review: For some reason, this book has garnered plenty of attention and praise. However, I found it just an okay read. The highly touted presence of Tess' new pet dog might draw animal lovers, but beware. I can say without giving a spoiler, that there are things in Charm City that will make anyone who at all likes animals extremely uncomfortable. The writing sometimes has charm, and the book goes back and forth between being mildly entertaining and boring/annoying. A couple of things that I found annoying: Despite author Laura Lippman's real-life status as a journalist, major plot points rest on "truths" about the newspaper business that are simply not true. So if you, like me, are knowledgeable about the newspaper business, you are *less* likely to solve the story's crimes. Tess has a live-in lover several years her junior and she agonizes over the age difference. Then she becomes romantically interested in a much older man and not only does the age difference not bother her, she *never even notes the irony* that it doesn't bother her. This is just silly, and sloppy. Charm City is not hideous, it's just an okay read that doesn't entirely play fair and doesn't reflect the realities of print journalism. If you'd like to read a great mystery with more than a bit of charm going for it, I recommend passing up Charm City and instead trying a book by Robert Crais, one of Carolyn Hart's Henrie O mysteries, or anything by Marcia Muller. I think you'll find any of these a smarter, more substantial read -- and if you're going to read a book, might as well make it a great one!
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Twists in this Nice Mystery
Review: Former newspaper reporter turned private investigator Tess Monoghan meets her friend Feeney, a reporter for the Beacon-Light, for a drink. She finds him drunk, because his editors pulled his story, an investigative piece into the scandalous background local businessman "Wink" Wynkowski, who is trying to bring professional basketball to Baltimore, just before its scheduled publication. However someone hacks into the newspaper's computer and the story runs anyway. Then Wynkowski winds up dead in his garage with his motor running. Was it suicide? The Beacon-Light hires Tess to discover who hacked into their computer. As Tess begins to dig, she discovers a dark side to the story and now her life may be in danger. There are lots of twists and red herrings in this story that delivers enough description about Baltimore to almost be considered a travelogue. A nice mystery.
Rating:
Summary: Unappealing main character, poor writing
Review: From the beginning, I did not like Tess, the protagonist of this mystery. She is too hostile and lacks a real sense of humor. Also she is too knowledgable about newspapers and life in general for being only 29. What I liked least about this book was the writing style. I never really got to know Tess because the book is in 3rd person. The "narrator" knows a lot more than Tess does and for pages at a time we are not seeing the story unfold through Tess's eyes but rather through this narrative voice. The entire scene where Tess's "rival" Rosita is being fired is told this way and that's when I lost interest and stopped reading. I didn't care about the newspaper mystery, or about what happened to Uncle Spike. The book was overly long, filled with hours of driving around. The dog was poorly detailed. I love dogs and didn't care at all about this one. Most of the other characters were "stock" as well. For better mysteries involving older woman-young lover try early books by Judith Van Giesen.
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