Book Club Questions for
Laura Lippman

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

In your author's note you explain that you derived some inspiration for this book from the infamous case of the Lyon sisters who disappeared from Wheaton Plaza in 1975. How did this story influence your plot line?

To answer that, I have to start in sort of a backwards way. I'm really bad at science. And while I totally get the appeal of crime novels that are driven by technical detail, I'm never going to be able to write a book like that. So when I was reminded of the Lyon sisters, I began to wonder -- how would someone establish the identify of a long-missing person, a person who was probably never fingerprinted (because kids weren't, then), a person might not have any biologicial kin, or whose biological kin is hard to find. So that was the true inspiration, to write a story that would rely on old-fashioned police work, which is rooted largely in psychology.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Is it probable that a child could be abducted from her family and then as an adult never come forward with who she is or what happened to her? Would it be a result of the trauma?

Probable? No. Credible? I hope so. I tried to make it so. In fact, the book is written for the person who figures out the true identity of the mystery woman, and would then wonder: Well, why won't she tell the truth? Sunny Bethany believes that she can't go home again, that what she has done is unforgivable.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Can we place blame with any of the characters for not being able to track down Heather and Sunny? Willoughby maybe for not figuring out the Dunham connection during the original investigation?

I hope that readers see this as a story that moves beyond the realm of blame, one in which people are asked to forgive one another. And, harder for these characters, themselves.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

It was alluded to throughout the novel that Dave died young, after his daughters disappearance. Why did he choose to wait for so many years before ending his life?

Remember the chapter in which Dave envisions "hope" as a taunting ugly beast, but a beast that happens to be his only companion? When hope ends, life ends for Dave. He accepts that he will never know what happened to his daughters, and he has no desire to go on living.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Did the lack of a biological connection make any difference in how Dave and Miriam felt about their loss? I actually thought they felt the loss more acutely since they believed themselves so fortunate to have Sunny and Heather in the first place.

I think this is an example of something that was key to plot -- again, it thwarted obtaining a scientific answer -- that was also central to the novel's emotional life. Dave and Miriam, as adoptive parents, have to cope with a certain amount of defensiveness, especially given that they adopted in a less-enlightened time.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Infante was an interesting side character. Why did you choose to make him come across as such a sex addict? Seemed like it was a way to show that even the normal, nice guys have dark inconsistencies as well.

I wanted to show that a man who was careless with women, in a sense, could have a small epiphany. Infante's behavior is on a continuum -- not illegal, not as predatory as Tony Dunham's, but not particularly attractive. I don't think he's going to change much, but he takes a little time, at the novel's end, to talk to a woman he doesn't consider an object of desire. And that's a pretty big step for someone like Infante.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

There are some inferences about cops not always being the "good guys" we think them to be. How do you think this is reflected in real life?

Every profession has bad apples. Furthermore, police are often subjected to a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't conundrum -- society gives them tacit consent to bend the rules if it makes _us_ feel safer, but bristles if our own rights are abused in any way.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

I thought the best part of the entire story (and I quiver a little using that terminology because the story is so horrible, but you've written it masterfully so there is a best part!) was the extremely different yet extremely believable reactions of Dave and Miriam over the loss of their children. Was one "better" than the other? Was Dave a better parent because he mourned his girls every day? Was Miriam stronger because she chose to move on? Is it possible to ever really get over something like this

I think you've hit on the central point of the novel. There's no right way to grieve, and there's no official endpoint. We must allow people their grief, as uncomfortable as that can be. People are, for the most part, well-intentioned. But our desire to see grief end is as much about us as it is about our concerns for those who grieve. Grief makes us uncomfortable. It scares us. Ann Hood, a novelist I much admire, lost her 5-year-old daughter suddenly and unexpectedly. First she wrote a novel, now she has a memoir about the same subject. Reading her work, I feel a little bit like an impostor, trying to imagine these impossible things, but I do think I was right about my primary impulse. Again, there's no right way to grieve, and no official endpoint to grief. We have to let people find their own way.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

Can you tell us a little bit about your thinking when choosing the title for this story? Often times as readers we project our own ideas about why an author chose a particular title and then we're way off!

I'm not great at titles. In this case, I read a lot of poetry and started reading the Bible. It was there that I found the verse: Pity the dead, for the dead know nothing. But, if you think about it, one of the central moments in WHAT THE DEAD KNOW is known only by the dead -- Heather and Tony. I will confide something here that I've never told anyone: I often have a song on my iPod, part of a playlist compiled for working out, that is key to the book-in-progress. When I was writing WHAT THE DEAD KNOW, I put "Cherish," by the Association on my iPod. It's an easy song to mock, but it's the kind of song that a dreamy adolescent girl might find appealing. I could imagine Sunny having liked a song such as that, although she would be quick to disavow it. I could imagine her teacher at the music store, pounding it out on the organ in a cheesy way. And I could imagine Heather, jumping up and down on the bed, as that song played. It may sound off, but I'm not sure what happened in that motel room. I have a hunch -- I think Tony Dunham was a dangerous and violent man, particularly when thwarted in his plans -- but I don't know.

Book Club Questions for Laura Lippman

You are an amazingly successful author! Any insight you can give to struggling writers out there? What does it take to "make it big?"

Luck is the central element. But think of luck as a good fairy who might alight at any time and anoint you.