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The lost children
''By a Spider's Thread''
Reviewed by John Orr
Laura Lippman brings back private detective Tess Monaghan in ''By a Spider's Thread,'' an involving and impressive tale of a family torn
asunder by old sins.
Monaghan is hired by a wealthy furrier, Mark Rubin, to find his wife and
children. The police can't do much, they say, because the beautiful Natalie left
voluntarily.
Monaghan starts the search somewhat at odds with Rubin because he is an
Orthodox Jew who won't even shake her hand -- his belief doesn't allow him to touch a woman
other than his wife.
He's stiff, he's proper, he kept his wife at home and controlled her
money, which doesn't make Monaghan like him. Monaghan is half Jewish, half Irish, and is all
about being tough and self-reliant. Monaghan pretty much assumes Rubin's wife had left to keep
from being suffocated.
But the story's not that simple, and Lippman unfolds its depths and
manifold ironies with considerable artistry, letting us slowly learn the truth about Natalie, who
has survived in life by knowing when to open her mouth and when to shut it. After a while it
becomes clear she is as dumb as a mud puddle, but with lesser morals.
Natalie has taken her children -- Isaac, who is 9, and the 4-year-old
twins, Penina and Efraim -- on a road trip with the mysterious Zeke. After Isaac -- a very
sharp little boy -- tries to tell a bank guard there is something amiss, Zeke starts stuffing
Isaac into the car trunk for hours at a time. And feeding bacon to the twins.
Natalie and Zeke -- who has just gotten out of prison -- have planned
their escapade for some time, we learn, but each has a different goal in mind.
Monaghan makes clever use of something fun: an online community of women
detectives, who hook up with each other at snoop-sisters.com. They help each other with
chatty advice about cases and love lives, and even tailing each other's suspects. Lippman makes
her readers dance between fear and laughs when one of the snoop sisters -- a librarian -- starts tailing the
sociopathic Zeke in a gold Mini Cooper, from only a car length or so in back. Isaac spots her
first, but it's not long before Zeke does as well, and we worry about the nice lady in the cute
little car.
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