Dream Girl Read online

  If you want to play the game of figuring out who Gerry Andersen is, check out the author photo on this book. We are about the same age, creatures of Baltimore, formed by many of the same small experiences, none of the large ones. This is a book about what goes on inside a writer’s mind and it is, by my lights, my first work of horror.

  Over the past few years, I have begun repurposing books that are beloved to me, trying to figure out how to further the conversations they began in my head. Stephen King’s Misery was clearly an influence here, but so were Roth’s Zuckerman Unbound and Margaret Mitchell Dukore’s A Novel Called Heritage.

  But I think this novel was largely birthed in the living room of a now razed St. Petersburg, Florida, bed-and-breakfast, where the faculty at Writers in Paradise met for one week in January for fifteen years to drink and talk, talk and drink.

  I had the usual support of “my” publishing team, people I have named often and will not try to list here as I will almost certainly forget someone. I had the support of my family as well and many friends, both in real life and on social media platforms. In fact, it was via Facebook that Martha Frankel put me in touch with Joe Donahue, who was extremely helpful in his description of healing from a bilateral quad tear. My neighbors who happen to be doctors, Joyce Jones and Andrew Stolbach, also offered assistance. And, sometimes, food and alcohol.

  Two Baltimoreans bid on the right to have their names used in this book, with their contributions going directly to my daughter’s school. Thank you, Thiru Vignarajah and Sarah Kotula.

  When I began this book in 2019, my desire was to set it in a time I call nowish, but the pandemic forced my hand. It’s odd to feel nostalgia for the life one was living when a book project began. By the time I finished this novel, my daughter was “distance learning” at home, which meant that I had to get up at sunrise to do my allotment of pages. This was exactly how I wrote twenty-plus years ago, when I still had a full-time job.

  You know what? I liked it.

  Laura Lippman

  Baltimore, 2020

  About the Author

  Laura Lippman’s novels have won many crime fiction prizes, including the Edgar, Anthony and Agatha awards. Sunburn (2018), her second consecutive novel to win the eDunnit award at Crimefest, was also nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger award and was a Waterstones Book of the Month. Her most recent novel, Lady in the Lake (2019), featured in numerous best of year lists and was followed by the publication of her first collection of essays, My Life as a Villainess (2021).

  ALSO BY LAURA LIPPMAN

  Lady in the Lake

  Sunburn

  Wilde Lake

  After I’m Gone

  And When She Was Good

  The Most Dangerous Thing

  I’d Know You Anywhere

  Life Sentences

  What the Dead Know

  To the Power of Three

  Every Secret Thing

  Hardly Knew Her

  TESS MONAGHAN SERIES

  Baltimore Blues

  Charm City

  Butchers Hill

  In Big Trouble

  The Sugar House

  In a Strange City

  The Last Place

  By a Spider’s Thread

  No Good Deeds

  Another Thing to Fall

  The Girl in the Green Raincoat

  Hush Hush

  Copyright

  First published in the UK in 2021

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  First published in the USA in 2021

  by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

  195 Broadway

  New York NY10007

  This ebook edition first published in 2021

  All rights reserved

  © Laura Lippman, 2021

  The right of Laura Lippman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Cover design adapted from an original by Elsie Lyons

  Cover photographs © Eva Aguilar Arranz/Arcangel Images (woman); © Monica Lazar/Trevillion Images (notes); © BackgroundStore/Shutterstock (texture); © local_doctor/Shutterstock (texture)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–36100–7