No Good Deeds by Laura Lippman (2006, Unabridged, Compact Disc)

Laura Lippman’s Baltimore detective, Tess Monaghan, shares center stage with her live-in love interest, Edgar “Crow” Ransome, whose narrative voice opens and closes this novel. The result is a mystery much closer to home than others in this series. When, on a snowy night, Crow decides to take in a homeless, Black, inner-city teenager to give him a warm place to sleep, he little knows that his good deed will enmesh him in a chain of murders and expose everyone he holds dear to an especially persistent and officious trio of Federal investigators. But a Federal prosecutor was killed two weeks before, and Tess and Crow’s guest knows more about it than his host and hostess could have ever had reason to suspect.

Lippman’s characters have strong social consciences, and her novels not only entertain but skillfully incorporate contemporary issues, in this case, the multiple pressures upon disadvantaged urban youths. A better than average writer in this genre, Lippman avoids stereotyping and heavy-handed preaching. Narrator Linda Emond does very little character differentiation and makes no effort at all to make Ransome’s voice distinctive from Tess’s. Her strength is in her pacing and expressiveness.