← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Beach Reads: Laura Lippman's "Murder Takes a Vacation"
00:23:31
Laura Lippman discusses her new work, which The New York Times calls "a rollicking adventure of the highest order."
Loading summary
Transcript64 lines
- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance Ad
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [00:31]
Alison Stewart
You're listening to all of it on welcome back on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Writer Laura Lippman is the internationally best selling award winning author of the Tess Moynihan series. In her latest novel, Murder Takes a Vacation, Tess is not the main character. Muriel Blossom or Mrs. Blossom is. She's a character who began as Tess's unassuming but invaluable assistant back in 2008. Now in her late 60s, widowed and a grandmother, Mrs. Blossom comes into a sudden windfall after finding a stray lottery ticket and she decides to spend some of the win on a river cruise in Paris. At the airport getting ready to board the plane to Paris, Mrs. Blossom notices the unexpected attention she receives from Alan, a handsome, flattering man who insists on helping her with her luggage and taking care of her every need. He's a bit too nice. She had been warned about people taking advantage of her because of her winnings. But Mrs. Blossom has a tendency to ignore what she really doesn't want to see. So she pushes aside any suspicions. And because of that, just as she begins her Parisian adventure, she unknowingly thrust into a world of telltale art murder and reinventing herself in her 60s. The novel is titled Murder Takes a Vacation. It's on our summer beach reads list. It could be part of your summer challenge. The book published in 2025. Hi Laura.
- [01:54]
Laura Lippman
Hi. It's nice to talk to you.
- [01:55]
Alison Stewart
It is so nice to talk to you as well. Mrs. Blossom was some of a minor character in your other books. What made you realize she deserved her own novel?
- [02:05]
Laura Lippman
I think that part of it was that I felt like I hadn't really done right by her. I had received at least one email complaint that her first depiction was a little bit ageist. And you know, the funny thing is is in 2008, Mrs. Blossom and I were almost 20 years apart and now I'm almost as old as she is. So I think I enjoyed the challenge of writing about someone who is more or less my age in not the same circumstances but somewhat similar circumstances. She's a widow. I got divorced a couple of years ago. We're both living slightly different lives than we thought we were going to be living in our 60s. And I had a lot to say about what it's like to be a woman in her 60s moving through the world.
- [02:52]
Alison Stewart
She gets up, she winds up entangled in sort of an international art crime, a heist, sort of, we'll leave it there. How did you choose for that storyline for Mrs. Blossom?
- [03:06]
Laura Lippman
So part of this is I was kind of inspired by watching the movie Charade for the fifth or sixth time, which is about people hunting for an object and a woman who is insisting she doesn't have the object, doesn't even know what it is, doesn't know where this money is. I'm a docent at the American Visionary Art Museum here in Baltimore. So I've been spending a lot more time thinking about museums, and I noticed probably felt like around 20, 21, 20, 22, more and more stories about items in either museums or people's private collections that had really kinky provenance. And it's a really interesting ethical question of to whom does art belong when the art has been taken from its country of origin without permission. And I just thought that was a pretty timely story to tell.
- [03:54]
Alison Stewart
Okay. You being a docent is the most exciting thing ever. All day.
- [03:59]
Laura Lippman
It's so fantastic. It is. It's the best thing I've done for myself. I started about. I entered the program three years ago. I just did a tour last week. I love every minute of it.
- [04:09]
Alison Stewart
It's part of my dream at one point to be a docent at a museum.
- [04:14]
Laura Lippman
One of the things I've been telling people, even though, you know, I'm in my 60s, but I have a teenage daughter. So I live this kind of weird split life, but I was like, I am living my best old lady life. I travel a lot. I'm a docent. It's like, I spend a lot of time in New York going to theater. I mean, it's sort of like, what's not to love? I was like, you know, I'll probably be a little sad when my daughter goes to college, but I'm ready.
- [04:41]
Alison Stewart
I'm taking a page from you. My guest is award winning writer Laura Lippman. We're discussing her new mystery, Murder Takes a Vacation. Okay. So the book dips in and out of this whodunit suspense, but it's also about girlhood and motherhood and womanhood in general. What made you want to discuss these issues and how did you balance the whodunit with the bigger picture issues around womanhood?
- [05:10]
Laura Lippman
So I think initially I was starting with just the idea that, oh, wouldn't it be Fun to write a really straight up Agatha Christie, cosy, you know, classic, you know, Murder on the Nile type book. Had no idea how hard that was going to be. I was reminded frequently during the writing of this book the old saying, dying is easy, comedy is hard. And the cozy is a much tougher form than some of the hard boiled noir that I've done in the past because you just can't drop a body every time you need to create suspense. It's. It's a little more proper. It's a, it's a self contained world and you just can't, you can't rely on like an unexpected episode of violence to keep the story going. And once I cut inside Mrs. Blossom's head, I mentioned that we're alike, we're also kind of different. And in some ways, she was inspired by my sister and my mom. The idea of a woman who is not very worldly, who hasn't traveled a lot, who's shy and self conscious. For various reasons. She likes herself. She really does like herself. But she's aware that she moves through a world where when she is seen, people are often quite cruel about her because she's overweight. And that was part of the original character and I wanted to keep it. And the more I wrote about Mrs. Blossom, the deeper I got into her mindset. And it was as much a novel about her sort of coming into herself. It's very meta. She's learning to be the main character.
- [06:49]
Alison Stewart
You're right.
- [06:50]
Laura Lippman
Yeah.
- [06:52]
Alison Stewart
She's used to being unnoticed.
- [06:55]
Laura Lippman
Yes, yes.
- [06:56]
Alison Stewart
Waiting in the background.
- [06:58]
Laura Lippman
Absolutely.
- [07:00]
Alison Stewart
But she learns how to change. At one point. At one point she's sort of va va voom in her caftan.
- [07:06]
Laura Lippman
She is. I mean, Mrs. Blossom is such a funny thing to say about a character I created. Mrs. Blossom is sexy, much sexier than I am. I have no problem saying that. I just had this sense of her as I was writing about her, that her sincerity makes her very attractive to people. The people who meet her understand immediately that what you see is what you get. She's kind of. She's conscientious, she cares about people, she listens to people, she has no deceit in her. She's really just the loveliest person. And because of that, people are drawn to her.
- [07:52]
Alison Stewart
Does that mean that that's a source of tension in the book? Because she is so honest, because she.
- [07:59]
Laura Lippman
Is so forthcoming, it makes her vulnerable. And the people in her life who love her the best are constantly trying to remind her, like, look, you're a widow, you've come into money, you have to watch out for fortune hunters. You have to be more suspicious of people. And she really struggles with that. She. She tends to see the good in everyone.
- [08:22]
Alison Stewart
There's a moment when she assumes that someone who's been abrupt with her that she must have done something to provoke it. What did you want to show about? I guess it's self blame or her fascinating. Her belief that I did something wrong. It's gotta be me.
- [08:42]
Laura Lippman
Well, you know, in addition to being a whodunit, this is a book about a woman with a secret and a secret she's never been able to tell anyone. And it's something that causes her a lot of guilt and shame. And she needs to come to terms with it. And if anything, that's the bigger mystery in the book is what is the secret that she's carrying with her? What could she have done, this lovely, nice lady? What could she have to be guilty about? And so I think that is something that's on her mind almost through the entire book up until the end of the book. The book ends with her finally finding someone that she can talk to about the worst thing she ever did.
- [09:24]
Alison Stewart
She has a long, layered friendship that spans decades.
- [09:28]
Unnamed Guest
How did you want to capture that.
- [09:30]
Alison Stewart
Push and pull of such an old bond with a friend?
- [09:36]
Laura Lippman
In some ways, I think that's a little bit of a fantasy for me because I don't have a friend going back to grade school. I haven't been able to maintain a friendship over that many decades, although I'm still very close to a friend that I met at summer camp. So we met when we were 15 and we have stayed close and we have led very different lives in different places, and we've had to work hard to maintain the friendship. And there were some, you know, some peaks and valleys along the way. But, you know, last summer when I was probably still in revisions on this book, there I was with my friend of 50 years at her daughter's wedding. So that was a good role model. My friend Nancy, what's important to you in a friendship? Kindness and loyalty. I really expect. I expect my friends to be nice to me. Does that sound weird? But I think some people have friends who are kind of like mean and sarcastic. And I expect friends to hold me up to be the people I can trust when things are going really badly.
- [10:46]
Unnamed Guest
I don't like people who tease, you know, teasing.
- [10:50]
Laura Lippman
I'm guilty of it. But I have come to understand that it's probably always a really bad idea. Nobody likes to be teased. So why do we tease one another? And maybe, maybe within certain relationships there's a little bit of teasing that works, but for the most part, no, it's horrible.
- [11:09]
Unnamed Guest
Has your view of friendship changed as you've gotten older?
- [11:15]
Laura Lippman
I would say that what has changed, and I think the book reflects this, is that I really do think friendship might be more important than romance. I mean, in an ideal life you get to have both. And I've had romance in my life because I've been married twice. But I always think about that line from the end of the film about a boy. It's like one person's not enough. You need backup. And my friendships, really first during the pandemic, which happened to completely parallel my separation and divorce, my friendships got me through. And friendship, friendship is, in the end, more important to Mrs. Blossom than romance. She's worried about making new friends and expanding her world. She realizes she needs backup. That, you know, as great as Eleanor is as a friend, she needs other people in her life and people with different interest.
- [12:17]
Unnamed Guest
I'm speaking with writer Laura Lippman. We're discussing her new mystery, Murder Takes a Vacation, where a lethal art heist disrupts what was supposed to be an idyllic Parisian vacation. Mrs. Blossom, she's in her late 60s. When you thought about that age and you thought about the way it's been written, what did you not want to write about? A 68 year old lady?
- [12:43]
Laura Lippman
I mean, I'm a 66 year old lady and I know that in my head I'm not that different than I was in my 40s or my 50s, maybe even my 30s. I just don't think we're ever old to ourselves. I mean, I like to kind of grab that title. I love to tell people I'm an old lady because they're like, oh, you're not. My therapist told me I'm not an old lady. And I'm like, yeah, I'm an old lady. I mean, one of the things I've talked a lot about on this book tour, something I figured out writing this book is a book. A narrative does have a natural three act structure. And in the third act, opportunity and possibility narrows because you're moving toward this conclusion and certain suspects have been jettisoned and certain things cannot happen because of the things that have already happened. But I think in life, and this is practically, in some ways the last line of the book, I think in life, your opportunities can keep broadening. Your life can get bigger as you age. If you're lucky enough to be healthy and have the financial resources you need to live as you would like to. There's no reason for life to narrow in our 60s and 70s. And I've really embraced that idea again, I already said this, but I'm having more fun right now than I've ever had. I'm just. I'm just having a blast.
- [14:13]
Unnamed Guest
It's interesting about Mrs. Blossom because she gets. People in the book are getting second chances and third chances. How does Mrs. Blossom have to. To start again? And what's challenging for her, starting again as a widow especially, this is a.
- [14:31]
Laura Lippman
Woman who has spent her entire adult life sort of as a nurturer or a caretaker. She married very young and had a very happy marriage to a man who died pretty unexpectedly. She was only 58 when her husband died. And she goes more or less straight from there to caring for her granddaughters and being essential as a caretaker. But now her family is moving overseas. They don't need her in that role anymore. She's not invited to go along. She really is kind of presented with a blank page, like, who are you going to be now? You're not taking care of anyone but yourself now. How do you keep your life from feeling small and kind of empty? And I've mentioned my mom once here. My mom, who died last summer, was a great role model to me in the 10 years that she was widowed. My dad died in 2014, and my mom had the busiest, most active life. She was always making friends wherever she was. She volunteered at a library when she lived in a small seaside town in Delaware. Everybody knew her. She eventually moved to Baltimore to live in a continuing care community, made a ton of friends right away. And, you know, I really was inspired by how my mom lived her life.
- [15:53]
Alison Stewart
What inspired you? What was it about? The way she approached your mom, the way she approached her life, the fact.
- [16:01]
Laura Lippman
That she was always doing new things, the fact that she was making new friends. I mean, my mom, she would sign up to go to the Oriole Games, she would sign up to go to theater. I took a very similar trip to the one that is portrayed in this book. And when I came back, my mom, who at the time would have been 91, said, could I do a trip like that? And I said, yeah, you could. There were people with nowhere close to your mobility who were on this trip. And these trips are kind of rated in terms of how much mobility you need. And so it had actually been our hope, which we didn't get to do, to take a three generation cruise. My mother, my daughter and I, and I just. Her mind was always open, you know, My mom was. The final weeks of my mother's life began when she tried to get out of bed after Joe Biden's speech and realized she was in a lot of pain from a compressed vertebrae. And I was like, you stayed up.
- [17:02]
Alison Stewart
On Joe Biden's speech.
- [17:04]
Laura Lippman
You're a better woman than I am. I was probably in bed by 10 o'. Clock. Mom. Yeah. She was so interested in. She followed a lot of tennis players. She cared about that. I got so many condolence notes that mentioned, you know, her rigorous reading of the newspaper every morning. And she cared so much about the Orioles. I loved that. I mean, the games were always on when I went to visit her during the summer. She was. It's a cliche, but my mom was really living her best life.
- [17:36]
Alison Stewart
She sounds terrific. Why did you choose Paris as your location?
- [17:43]
Laura Lippman
Why did I choose Paris? I don't remember. That's so funny. I think part of it was that it seemed what Mrs. Blossom would have chosen. I mean, it's mentioned in the book that originally she's scared to go to someplace where she doesn't speak the language. And there really was a Joan Mitchell show. Joan Mitchell, the abstract expressionist, who's a very important artist. And Mrs. Blossom, there was a show in Paris, probably it was March 2023, I think. So I was like, oh, that's what she would do. She would go there to see those paintings, and that would be enough to get her to overcome her fear of a place where she doesn't speak the language. And also, I think it had to be a place where she felt a little bit at sea. I think going to London wouldn't have been as overwhelming for her. I did want her to take on a big challenge.
- [18:34]
Alison Stewart
I'm going to ask you to read a page from the book. It starts on 1:35. Because Mrs. Blossom finds herself on the receiving end of compliments she struggles to accept. Sometimes she thinks in remarks about her size. Could you read a little bit of this when you talk about it on the other side?
- [18:53]
Laura Lippman
Sure. She's talking to a mysterious man named Danny, who always seems to be around when things go wrong for her. And Danny asked her, why are you so obsessed with your size? Because the world is obsessed with my size. Mrs. Blossom's words burst forward with a vehemence that surprised her, but she couldn't stop herself. She realized she didn't want to stop herself because strangers offer me diet tips and suggest that I think about having the salad with dressing on the side because people say good for you and give me a thumbs up in the gym. Because since I was in grade school, people have told me what a pretty face I have and talked about my dainty hands and feet as if I didn't know what that was code for. Because when we went to see Fantasia on a class field trip, everyone looked at me when the hippos danced. Danny looked confused. What is it code for dainty hands and feet? Since my hands and feet are small, people seem to think it means all of me could be small if I just tried. I did try when I was a teenager. If I hadn't, my mother probably would have locked me in a room and fed me bread and water for the rest of my life. I ate as she told me to eat, but I never lost weight. God. When Harold proposed, I couldn't get out of my parents house fast enough. We were married three months after we met and we were very happy despite her dire predictions, Mary and haste. Danny said, I hate to take her side, but she had a point. My marriage was wonderful. Always. Always. She lied.
- [20:18]
Alison Stewart
That was Laura Lippman reading from Murder Takes a Vacation. What did you want us, the reader, to understand about Mrs. Blossom in that moment?
- [20:30]
Laura Lippman
That. So one of the things that's funny because people have been hesitant to talk about this on the book tour, Mrs. Blossom, is fat. And that's a word that I use consciously because I've been following the work of Virginia Soul Smith and Aubrey Gordon, Kate Mann, who is nominated for a National Book award for Unshrinking, who've really encouraged people to see that as an objective, factual word, that even though it's been weaponized and used unkindly, they're hopeful for a world in which we can just see this as an objective term. Some people are fat. Mrs. Blossom happens to be fat. No one has wanted to say this word to me. Some people say ample, some people say plus size. And. And I wanted to write a book about a woman who is comfortable in her own skin but knows the culture at large doesn't approve of what she looks like. And what is that like to have the confidence to like yourself and to understand that, you know. No, she was forced on diets as a kid and they didn't work. And so she's left that all behind. She doesn't try to change herself. She had a great romantic marriage to a man who loved her as she was, but she can just feel all the judgment and it's a kind of bigotry and she's aware of it. And she tries very hard not to talk about it, but she finally just lets it fly in that scene.
- [22:03]
Unnamed Guest
Well, you're gonna have to read to find out the murder it takes on a vacation. Takes a vacation. Before we let you go, we wanted to ask you about your five recommendations for our summer reading challenge. A classic you've been meaning to get to.
- [22:20]
Laura Lippman
Okay, so I kind of did this backwards, which is I give recommendations to everyone else.
- [22:24]
Unnamed Guest
Go for it.
- [22:25]
Laura Lippman
All the books on my list. So I really encourage people to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which I think would be considered one of the great classics of American literature if it had been centered on a male character. It tends to be just tends to be regarded as ya. It's a brilliant, brilliant book and it does not get enough attention.
- [22:46]
Unnamed Guest
A book about New York.
- [22:48]
Laura Lippman
Emma who Saved My Life by Wilton Barnhart. Very funny novel set in the 70s and 80s about a young guy who's trying to break into acting and also just trying to find his dream girl.
- [22:59]
Unnamed Guest
Memoir, biography.
- [23:02]
Laura Lippman
Lorne by Susan Morrison. Oh, it's so good.
- [23:06]
Unnamed Guest
Really good.
- [23:08]
Laura Lippman
Yeah, terrific. Terrific book and just a really smart book. Has brilliant structure and just really solid reporting. I loved it.
- [23:18]
Unnamed Guest
And a book published in 2025.
- [23:20]
Laura Lippman
I picked careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams, which is the story of her time at Facebook. And boy, I wish that book had come out in actually 2023. I think more people needed to know what was going on with their social media.
- [23:35]
Unnamed Guest
And our last 10 seconds, rabbit and Juliet.
- [23:38]
Laura Lippman
Yes, by Rebecca Stafford. Full transparency. She's a friend and I blurbed the book, but it was a terrific YA debut. The kind of book that I want my daughter to read about the trouble that girls can get into.
- [23:49]
Unnamed Guest
Laura Lipman, thanks a lot.
- [23:52]
Laura Lippman
Thanks a pleasure as always.
- [23:54]
Progressive Insurance Ad
Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.