By a Spider's Thread - Rilegato

Lippman, Laura

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0060506695 ISBN 13: 9780060506698

Casa editrice: William Morrow & Co, 2004

Riassunto

New York Times Bestseller

Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan—first introduced in the classic Baltimore Blues—must track down a missing wife and unravel the secrets in her marriage that led her to flee.

“A hair raising ride.”—Boston Globe

Mark Rubin's family is missing—and the police won't get involved because all the evidence indicates that his wife left willingly. So the successful Baltimore furrier turns to Tess Monaghan, hoping she can help him find his wife and three children. Tess doesn't quite know what to make of Rubin, who doles out vitally important information in grudging dribs and drabs. According to her client, he and his beautiful wife, Natalie, had a flawless, happy marriage. Yet one day, without any warning or explanation, Natalie gathered up their children and vanished.

Tapping into a network of fellow investigators spread across the country, Tess is soon able to locate the runaway wife and the children who have been moving furtively from state to state, town to town. But the Rubins are not alone. A mysterious man is traveling with them, a stranger described by witnesses as "handsome" and "charming" but otherwise unremarkable. And the deeper Tess digs, the more she suspects that the motive behind Natalie's reckless flight lies somewhere in the gap between what Rubin will not say and what he refuses to believe.

An intricate web of betrayal and vengeance is already beginning to unfold, as memory begets rage, and rage begets desperation…and murder. Suddenly, much more than one man's future happiness and stubborn pride are in peril. For the lives of three innocent children are dangling by the slenderest of threads.

 

 

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Informazioni sull?autore

Since Laura Lippman’s debut, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the “essential” crime writers of the last 100 years. Stephen King called her “special, even extraordinary,” and Gillian Flynn wrote, “She is simply a brilliant novelist.” Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty-five languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her teenager.

Dalla quarta di copertina

The winner of every major literary award in crime fiction, Laura Lippman brings back her complex and vulnerably human Baltimore P.I., Tess Monaghan, in a tense, expertly spun tale of a family torn asunder by forces it can barely comprehend.

Mark Rubin's family is missing -- and the police can't do a thing because all the evidence indicates that his wife left willingly. So the successful furrier turns to Tess Monaghan, hoping she can help him find his wife and three children. Tess doesn't know quite what to make of Rubin, a wealthy Orthodox Jew who refuses to shake her hand and doles out vitally important information in grudging dribs and drabs. According to her client, he and his beautiful wife, Natalie, had a flawless, happy marriage. Yet one day, without any warning or explanation, Natalie gathered up their children and vanished.

Tapping into a network of fellow investigators spread across the country, Tess is soon able to locate the runaway wife and her stolen progeny, moving furtively from state to state, town to town. But the Rubins are not alone. A man is traveling with them, a stranger described by witnesses as "handsome" and "charming" but otherwise unremarkable to these casual observers, who have no way of sensing the fury beneath his smooth surface.

The motive behind Natalie's reckless flight lies somewhere in the gap between what Mark Rubin will not say and what he refuses to believe. An intricate web of betrayal and vengeance is already beginning to unravel, as memory begets rage and rage leads to desperation -- and murder. And suddenly much more than one man's future happiness and stubborn pride are in peril; the lives of three innocent children are dangling by the slenderest of threads.

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By a Spider's Thread

By Lippman, Laura

William Morrow & Company

ISBN: 0060506695

Chapter One

September

They were in one of the "I" states when Zeke told Isaac hehad to ride in the trunk for a little while. Zeke announcedthis new plan in what Isaac thought of as his fakey voice,big and hollow, with too much air in it. This was the voice Zekeused whenever Isaac's mother was nearby. He used a very differentone when she couldn't hear.

"You brought this on yourself, buckaroo," Zeke said, securingthe suitcases to the roof of the car, then making a nest in the centerof the trunk. When Isaac just stared at the space that had been created,not sure what Zeke wanted him to do, Zeke picked him upunder the arms, swinging him into the hole as if Isaac weighednothing at all. "See, plenty of room."

"Put down a blanket," Isaac's mother said, but she didn't objectto the trunk idea, didn't say it was wrong or that she wouldn't allow it. She didn't even mind that Zeke had stolen the blanket from themotel room. She just stood there with Penina and Efraim huddledclose to her, looking disappointed. That was the last thing Isaac sawbefore Zeke closed the trunk: his mother's face, sad and stern, as ifIsaac were the bad one, as if he had caused all the trouble. So unfair.He was the one who was trying to do the right thing.

The trunk was bigger than Isaac expected, and he was not asfrightened as he thought he would be. It was too bad it was such anold car. A new one, like his father's, might have an emergency lightinside, or even a way to spring the lock. His father had shown himthese features in his car after he found Isaac playing with the buttonson his key ring -- popping the trunk, locking and unlocking theCadillac's doors. Isaac's mother had yelled, saying the key ringwasn't a toy, that he would break it or burn out the batteries, butIsaac's father had shown Isaac everything about his new car, evenunder the hood. That was his father's way. "Curiosity didn't kill thecat," his father said. "Not getting answers to his questions was whatgot the cat in trouble." His father had even shut himself in the trunkand shown Isaac how to get out again.

But this car was old, very old, the oldest car Isaac had everknown, probably older than Isaac. It didn't have airbags, or enoughseat belts in the backseat. Isaac kept hoping a policeman might pullthem over one day because of the seat belts. Or maybe a toll takerwould report his mother for holding one of the twins in her lap inthe front seat, which she did when they fussed. But there were notolls here, not on the roads that Zeke drove. Isaac was trying so hardto keep track -- they had started out in Indiana, and then they wentto Illinois, but Isaac was pretty sure that they had come back to Indianain the past week. Or they could still be in Illinois, or even asfar west as Iowa. It was hard to see differences here in the middle ofthe country, where everything was yellow and the towns had strangenames that were hard to pronounce.

It was hard to tell time, too, without school marking the days off,without a calendar on the kitchen wall, without Shabbat reminding you that another week had ended. Would God understand aboutmissing Shabbat? If God knew everything, did he know it wasn'tIsaac's fault that he wasn't going to yeshiva? Or was it up to Isaac tofind a way to pray no matter what, the way his father did when hetraveled for business? Now, this was the kind of conversation his fatherloved. He would have started pulling books from the shelves inhis study, looking for various rabbis' opinions. And, whatever theanswer was, his father would have made Isaac feel okay, would haveassured him that he was doing his best, which was all God expected.That was his father's way, to answer Isaac's questions and make himfeel better.

His father knew everything, or close enough. He knew historyand the Torah, math and science. He knew lots of terrific old warmovies and westerns, and the names of all the Orioles, past andpresent. Best of all, he could talk about the night sky as if it were astory in a book, telling the stories that the Greeks and Indians hadtold themselves when they looked at the same stars.

"Does Orion ever catch the bull?" Isaac had asked his fatheronce. Of course, that had been when he was little, six or seven. Hewas nine now, going into the fourth grade, or supposed to be. Hewouldn't ask such a question now.

"Not yet," his father had said, "but you never know. After all, ifthe universe is really shrinking, he may catch up with him still."

That had scared Isaac, the part about the universe shrinking, buthis father had said it wasn't something he needed to worry about.But Isaac worried about everything, especially now. He worriedabout Lyme disease and West Nile virus and whether Washington,D.C., would get a baseball team, which his dad said might not be sogood for the Orioles. He worried about the twins, who had startedtalking this weird not-quite-English to each other.

Mostly, though, he worried about Zeke and how to get awayfrom him.

Despite being locked in the trunk, bouncing and bumping downthe road, Isaac wasn't sorry that he had tried to talk to the guard man. His only mistake was letting his mother see him do it. If theline in the bank had been longer, if it hadn't moved so fast, he mighthave had time to explain himself. Why did lines move fast onlywhen you didn't want them to?

Continues...

Excerpted from By a Spider's Threadby Lippman, Laura Excerpted by permission.
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: William Morrow & Co
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0060506695
• ISBN 13: 9780060506698
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 354
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile