Laura Lippman is one of my favorite crime writers and my opinion of her has only improved after this interview. It is not just that she, like me, is a former journalist, or that I live close to Baltimore, the city where most of her stories takes place. No, it is that her stories are always clever and intelligent and unpredictable. 

She has just not only finished another novel in her consistently excellent Tess Monaghan series but also another project - Baltimore Noir, a collection of short stories all based in the city.

Scott Butki: How did the Baltimore Noir book/project come about?
Laura Lippman: Johnny Temple of Akashic books had a real break-out success with Brooklyn Noir, so he decided to create a franchise of sorts. As a Baltimorean, I was very pleased that the city was one of the early ones, preceded by Chicago, San Francisco, Dublin and D.C. As a local writer, I was very flattered to be asked to edit it, so I did.
 

SB: How would you define noir for those unfamiliar with the term, who may associate with great — but dead — writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashell Hammett? You give some interesting bits of trivia in the introduction - that James Cain and Hammett worked here and Edgar Allen Poe lived and died here. I still don't get why they call Baltimore “Charm City,” though.

LL: “Charm City” is just a slogan, coined by someone in advertising, I think. There's always been some confusion about the motto's origin. The thing is - it's sort of right by accident. On one level, it seems hyperbolic to the point of silliness to call Baltimore charming. For years, it was known mainly for the view from I-95, which I've heard compared to Dresden after World War II. But if you live here and know it and love it — "Charm City" makes sense. It's charming in a very offbeat way. It's so uncharming it's charming.

As for noir - I define it as dreamers who become schemers. Most noir stories center on people with recognizably human goals - love, money, power. In a noir novel, these people over-reach, pursue their dreams via crime - and almost always fail. Cain is a noir writer, but Chandler isn't, not by that definition, because his central character is ethical, even heroic at times, and never out for himself.