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.