"There was a little girl who had a
little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead
And when she was good, she was very, very
good
But when she was bad she was horrid.
Mother Goose
According
to her author's sleeve of When She Was Good, written in 2012, Laura
Lippman has been awarded every major prize in crime fiction. Each of her hardcovers has hit the Times
bestsellers list and that has to have only increased in the decade to come.
There are blurbs on the back of her books from the New York Times and the
Chicago Post as well as Harlan Coben and Tess Gerritsen and until fairly
recently she was married to David Simon, one of the greatest showrunners in TV
history.
So
once again it begs the question: why do so many of her contemporaries
(including Gerritsen and Coben) have at least one TV series or several film
adaptations of their work and Lippman has so relatively few? Considering that
Michael Connelly has had three adaptations of his novels turned into streaming
series at this point, that Karin Slaughter and Tony Hillerman have in the past
decade gotten their flagship characters received broadcast and cable series,
each now in their fourth season and James Patterson' Alex Cross has now gotten
a streaming series why is there as of yet no Tess Monoghan series planned for
any major platform? And considering that
so many of the limited series as well as TV series have been adapted from
female novelists far less prolific than Lippman why is it only this past year
that Apple finally made Lady of the Lake her first limited series of any
kind?
I
have no doubt if I were to pose this question to most progressives,
particularly women, they would make an argument of the toxic masculinity and
the patriarchy that has been victimizing women more than men, blah blah blah.
Until recently I might have bought that argument. But it wasn't until I
finished And When She Was Good that I realized that it might be
political but not in the traditional way.
Having now read enough of her books I'm pretty sure that the problem
with Lippman's writing is that its either not political enough or goes against
so much of the orthodoxy that has become part of Hollywood particularly in the
past decade.
First
there's the fact that I've now read a dozen of her books (six in the Tess
Monoghan series; half a dozen standalones) to realize something striking. While
Lippman's books are contemporary they basically choose to talk about the events
of the day as little more than background noise either not relevant to the
characters or when they are pointed out, make it clear the character things
that the concerns that the masses hold are basically irrelevant to the average
denizen of a Lippman novel.
In
large part this is due to setting: like her ex-husband Lippman is a resident of
Baltimore, one of the bluest cities in the bluest state of America. But like
her husband and indeed many of his co-writers on The Wire such as
Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane Lippman by and large takes the position that the
issues that are part of the 24 hour news cycle and social media, that are
shouted about by both parties, basically don't affect the average working class
person no matter what part of America they live in. And as a result the only
opinions they have on it are how they might affect them personally or if they
find it ridiculous that so many people seem to care about them. This flies in
the face of a Hollywood, who even before the 2016 election, was taking the
position that what happened in the White House and Congress was absolutely
vital to every person in America and that if a person chose to not to take a
side, they were taking one. Lippman's
books would make great stories on a streaming series or big screen but in a
Hollywood that increasingly considers pure entertainment not important enough
to do, they'd rather not waste their time. (On a side note this may be why many
of the above writers have been increasingly frowned upon by critics in both
book and TV form: there's an increasingly becoming an argument that even
fiction must reflect reality or it’s a waste of time.)
This
would be enough of a problem on its own. The bigger problem is that while
Lippman's novels are by and large fundamentally centered on female
protagonists, none of them meet the metrics that have become the standard of a
certain type of female character in so much of TV and film particularly by
female showrunners and actresses. A
female protagonist must be career oriented and not think of being a wife and
mother first. If she does bad things, they must in reaction to the oppressive
patriarchal structure around her and she must feel remorse for it when it
happens. And when she is in a career setting she must be openly superior to a
male in the exact same way and any problems she has are because of the
structure held by the white cis male.
With
almost no exceptions every single female character in a Lippman novel proudly
fails these metrics. Indeed they
often think the women who choose to put their careers first will eventually
fail at the personal life. Tess Monaghan was particular clear on this point in
her first books, making it clear that she might like a career but she wants
someone to come home to the end of the day and she mocks the idea that a woman
can have it all. And so there's no
confusion she wants to be happy personally more than career wise. Heloise
Lewis, the protagonist of Good, doesn't completely share Tess's ideals
but its clear at the end of the day her choices, flawed though they are, are
far more to protect her son then her career.
(By
the way though she doesn't appear in this novel it's clear Heloise knows Tess.
Her lawyer is Tyner, who is Tess's mentor and chief employer, and it's clear
Heloise has been using Tess to do background checks on clients. Tess might very
well know what Heloise is doing but by this point she's smart enough to keep
her nose out of other people's business unless they ask.)
Considering
that so many of Lippman's novels are modern noir that center on 21st
century versions of the femme fatale most of the female characters aren't happy
about doing bad things and they may have reasons to do them but they're not
striking a blow for feminism and its only occasionally they feel bad about it.
Heloise is not a femme fatale in the way that the leads of future classics like
Sunburn and Prom Mom are but she is just as ruthless and
cold-blooded as they are and is just as focused on her own survival. Unlike
them she has a false sense of moral superiority as well as a false idea of what
she truly is.
To
be clear Heloise is a suburban madam who runs high class girls and has been
doing so for nearly a decade. This actually brings me to the final point in
which Good openly argues, indirectly, that the arguments today about DEI
and feminism are a bad joke. Heloise was a prostitute who spent many of her
years under the abuse of a pimp named Val. When she became pregnant a vice cop
busted her and she offered to give him evidence of a murder Val committed in
exchange for it to be clear that there could be no connection back to her. The detective Tom set this up and Val went to a
Supermax for the rest of his life.
Heloise's
real name is Helen Lewis. She is the daughter of Beth and Hector. Hector had a
first wife named Barbara who he had three kids with but never divorced. He
lived with Beth, regularly beat her, then started to first berate and then
physically beat his daughter. Helen is an intelligent woman who wants to have a
career and plans to go to college but Hector's abuse is so horrendous that
eventually she is forced to get a job to support herself.
At
sixteen she ends up working at a diner with Billy, a man who is 25 and who
everybody warns her is a bad person. Because she has been the victim of so much
abuse from her father and her mother has done nothing to defend her, she finds
it impossible to believe anyone would love her. So Billy's attention seem to be
a way out. It isn't until it is too late that she realizes Billy is both a
criminal and an addict. By the time she's eighteen she's married to him,
dancing and is essentially halfway to being a whore. Three years later she's
essentially sold to Val and becomes his property.
Helen
keeps trying to find a way to keep moving forward. She goes to a library and
ends up tricking the boss there so that she can just read some great novels and
increasingly non-fiction. She gives up on the idea of her high school diploma
but she does get a GED. She doesn't think of getting higher up because it risks
angering Billy. When Val is busted for killing Martin (by that time she's
twenty five) she needs to find a way to provide for her son and she wants to be
her own boss and make her own hours.
So
she goes to see Val who basically tells her to go into an online prostitution
source in which he will be a silent parter. She trains with someone who is
doing the work and when she is busted
steals all her clients. Eventually Helen having spent years working with
a Maryland assemblyman decides to set up a false front in which her official
business is a lobby called: the Women's Full Employment Network.
Lippman,
I should mention, has a lot of fun satirizing what people think of a feminine
issue. WFEN is the name of a radio station she listened to is a youth. She
makes it clear her business is about the rise of women in employment. And she
chooses it because she knows that if she raises in her new suburban home none
of the rich white suburban people who no doubt call themselves liberal (in 2005
progressive was not part of the vernacular) will stop asking questions about
what she does for a living. "All she had to say was 'income parity' and
everyone was ready to change the conversation."
(In
fact later in the novel she mentions that she is part of the 1 percent and that
in fact it takes less money then you might think to be part of that fabled
group. I wonder what Bernie would think if he knew that.)
At
the start of the novel Heloise (she changed her name as a joke to the famous
advice columnist her mother read) has a successful business far beyond any
thing Val could have ever run. She has a good house in the suburbs, an
accountant who knows little about the business, employees with a health plan,
two legitimate business to launder her money and only two people who know what
she does for a living. (They're also, not coincidentally, the only two people
she considers friends.) One is Tom and one is Audrey.
Audrey
was also married at eighteen, and was abused by her husband for several years,
before she burned him alive. The prosecutor and police have no mercy for her
and she goes to prison for manslaughter. She's pardoned by the government and
goes to work for Heloise because she takes the title of the job at its word.
But Audrey is both unattractive and (hysterically) disapproves of adultery.
She's hired as an au pair but eventually she figures out what Heloise is doing
(equally hysterically by seeing a Lifetime movie) Heloise denies it until
Audrey manages to save Scott's life in a potential carjacking. When Audrey
decides not to be interviewed or photographed (to protect Scott and his mother)
Audrey asks for Heloise to trust her.
And Heloise does but tellingly judges her for
her taste in reality television and Lifetime Movies. Heloise believes because
she runs her own business and because she reads books like Sister Carrie and
Freakonomics she is above most people she knows. She's above the
suburban mothers because no one knows her secret. She's above her girls because
they are only employees. She's above her clients because she believes sex is
power over them. And even though she has since become an abused women herself,
she fundamentally believes herself to be above her mother who she's
fundamentally cut out of both her life and Scott's. You suspect the only reason she has any
sympathy for Audrey is because she chose to kill her abuser and was punished by
the law yet managed to walk away free.
The
irony is that Heloise Lewis has demonstrated that she has managed to do exactly
the kind of thing in a profession that is dominated by men as well as a woman
does. But not only is she no better morally than Val, she's not nearly as smart
as him, trusts the wrong people over and over and even before the action in the
novel begins has made it clear that her concern for the women under her ends
when they are no longer financially viable. There's a part of me that really
wants to compare Heloise Lewis to Elizabeth Theranos.
No
that's unfair. Theranos did a lot of bad things but I'm pretty sure she was
never guilty of conspiracy to commit murder which she more or less is guilty
even before the action starts.
The
action of the book starts in the presence with the headline of a suburban madam
who commits suicide. Heloise has been following the story of this woman with a
sort of vague interest – she was arrested eight months ago and they are in the
same profession – biut tellingly she looks down on her as a publicity hound and
thinks she's beneath her. We get a sense of her character when a nearby women
comments on the death and shows the exact things Heloise is thinking about her but
seems compelled to argue the other side of it.
I'm almost reminded of Walter White in Heloise's actions: no matter the
danger to her personally she often seems compelled to take a point of view that
could lead to danger, just to show how smart she is. The difference is Walter
White shared in a Nobel Prize for chemistry before he started cooking crystal
meth and all Heloise has is a GED and a sense of superiority because she believes
she can manipulate men with the power of her body.
I
must say the clearest parallel Heloise has to any figure in Peak TV is not
Walter White or any of the characters in any of her former husband's shows but
rather the women in Deadwood. The clearest parallels are of Trixie and
Joanie Stubbs, two prostitutes who have both undergone the kinds of horrible
treatment at men that Heloise did and like her seem beholden to their abusive
pimps. There's also a clear link to Alma Garrett, the widow who must throw off
her addiction and embrace an unlikely burden after a child is left in her care.
That said I can't help but think all
three of these women would look down their noses at Shelley the same way the
overwhelming number of characters she meets as her past comes back to haunt her
as well as some of the men in her present life do.
Indeed
late in the novel one of her old fellow girls from Val encounters her (I won't
reveal the circumstances) and lays bare exactly who she was and still is:
"Look,
you were always just a snooty bitch, thought you were better than everyone.
Because of your looks, because Val liked you best, because you were sneaking
around with those books. But what were you? You were just another whore."
And
that's the truth that Heloise keeps facing time and again: she's not as smart
as she thinks is. She keeps falling for
the maneuvers others make, listens to the wrong people, is outsmarted by Val
time and again even when he's in the Supermax.
She thinks because of her long-term relationships with a Maryland
assemblyman and Tom they think of her as a partner when in fact both of them
just see her as a prostitute. None of them think she could have a career outside
of being a prostitute or madam and indeed when she ends up trying to look for
other options, it's clear she's not qualified to do much of anything.
The
biggest difference between the women in Deadwood and Heloise is that all
of them understand in order to survive you need a community, alliances,
friends. Heloise has so isolated herself from the rest of the world in the name
of keeping her work and suburban world separate that she doesn't really have
anyone to turn to for help when the walls increasingly close in and the body
count starts piling up. Even then the only reason she finally decides to get
out is a selfish one: she doesn't want Scott to ever find out what she does for
a living. Both Joanie and Trixie would
agree with the assessment above.
And
Alma would have little use for how Heloise takes care of her son: while she
does everything to provide for him financially it's not clear how much time she
actually she spends with him during the course of today and so many of the interactions
she has are used as cover to discuss her own problems in public. And she's essentially spent her entire life
lying to him about his background and its only when he finds out the truth that
she's forced to think about his future. In the present Scott is eleven and part
of the reason its been so easy to keep things covered is because children care
less about adult things at that age. Even had the horrors that take place in
the novel not unfolded, there was always going to be a clock as to how long
Scott was going to take his mother's deflection – and eventually the internet
and technology would no doubt lead to him seeking out answers without needed
his mother's permission.
The
third reason why I doubt Lippman's books have been adapted for television is
that there's no real arc for the characters the way we almost always get in
limited series. At the end of other series that take place in these female led
literary adaptations with a darker past – Big Little Lies, Little Fires
Everywhere, Sharp Objects and so on – you get a sense of closure emotionally
in the sense that our female protagonists have learned something. Lippman's
novels rarely give us that sense and this is just as true at the end of And
When She Was Good.
To
be sure the mystery is solved, Heloise manages to survive and even find a path
forward (though I won't reveal how). But after all of the horrible revelations
have become clear there's no real sign that she's truly accepted responsibility
for her actions, nor how much her existence has paralleled her own mother's
even now. All she cares about is that the walls between her lives are sturdy
and she and her son survived. That there has been a string of bodies due to
what she's done is tragic and she feels unhappy about it but only in the same
detached way at the start. And she's just as ruthless and cold as before,
willing to manipulate people with a cold calculation the same way she did at
the start of the novel. Even the fact she's out of the business and safe from
prosecution is somewhat of an irritation as she now has to deal with a more
unpredictable clientele. (I won't reveal how she got there save to say it's
another satirical anti-feminist joke.) When she acknowledges at the end of the
novel she's no different from the suburban housewives she looked down on at the
start, she almost seems sorry to have left the old life behind.
This
brings me back to the title of the novel. Like with so many of Lippman's books
she never has a direct reference to it in the text. I have little doubt she has
enough confidence in her readers to draw their own conclusions at the end of
the book. In this case I think the
implication is that indeed Heloise has always been horrid And When She Was
Good – or tried to be – she ended up making things worse for those around
her but escaped unscathed. The next question is: "Can she live with that?"
and the reader knows the answer. That's not the way Hollywood likes its female characters,
even if it is realistic and entertaining.
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