LAURA LIPPMAN'S PROM MOM

 

 

 

By Margaret S. Hamilton

 

“Should he reach out to Amber? No. It was one thing to embrace his own redemption, another to open that Pandora’s box. He wished her well and he hoped, not just for his own sake, that she would be allowed to resume her life without the past rising up to haunt her. Staying away from her would be the greatest kindness Joe could confer. Thank god a gallery in that location was destined to tank.” (p.37-8)

 

In Laura Lippman’s psychological suspense novel, Prom Mom, three women are suspended in an orbit around handsome and narcissistic Joe Simpson: Joe’s plastic surgeon wife, Meredith; Joe’s current mistress, Jordan Altman; and Amber Glass, his high school classmate whom he impregnated during their senior year. The story is told from their alternating points of view, with dual timelines, 1997 and 2019-21, covering both the fateful prom and twenty-odd years later.

 

Amber’s baby dies shortly after her birth on prom night. After she serves time for murdering her infant, Amber heads south. Twenty-two years later, she inherits money and returns to the northern Baltimore suburbs on the cusp of the 2020 pandemic.

 

The three women crave Joe’s adulation. Meredith, who is childless by choice, only considers herself complete as Joe’s wife. Jordan is young, naïve, and ruthlessly determined to lure Joe away from his wife. Amber, who went to prison for her baby’s death, relentlessly stalks Joe. The three women are described as physically attractive, but they are otherwise unsavory characters. Tension arises when they collide or propose colluding with each other.

 

Despite the pandemic, all three women are professionally successful: with the self-absorption and insecurity provoked by constant Zoom meetings, patients flock to Meredith for facelifts and nose reshaping. Amber’s quirky selection of paintings and sculptures in her gallery is a hit. And Jordan sells new residential housing to Baltimore residents fleeing the city for a safer, COVID-free rural subdivision.

 

Lippman sets the stage using elements of our shared pandemic lives: an upscale grocery store, drive-through Starbucks, and on-line shopping. She employs New Orleans Mardi Gras king cake and red beans and rice to good effect. Exclusive brand names permeate the lives of the characters: Bulgari estate jewelry and vintage Elsa Peretti pieces; a fully loaded Range Rover and cherry-red Porsche; high-end stilettos contrasting with an iconic Muses Mardi Gras shoe. We’re spared the marble or quartz countertop dilemma, but learn about Peloton bikes.

 

For the first time in his life, Joe Simpson is a complete failure. Some of the women in his orbit will endure—smarter, more savvy, with stronger survival skills. For them, life will resume, changed, but eventually for the better without him.

 

Readers and writers, do you enjoy psychological suspense with problematic characters?