‘The Power of Three’ by Laura Lippman
Published by ISIS Audio Books.
ISBN 0-7531-4352-7
Read by Laurence Bouvard

 On a fine June morning in Glendale, Baltimore County, Maryland, USA, an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl is getting ready for her last day at school. Her choice of schoolbag is particularly important because in it she is concealing a gun. An hour or so later, in the girls’ toilet of Glendale High School, one girl is shot dead, another seriously injured, and a third has a wound to her foot – all with that same gun. The dead girl is the beautiful and gentle Cat Hartigan. The seriously injured girl is the wild and mercurial Perri Kahn. The girl with minor injuries is Josie Patel. Ten years ago, the three girls had sworn to be forever friends and had continued so until the last year when Perri flung away from her friends for some unexplained reason. There is no doubt that the shots came from Perri’s gun and it seems that she killed Cat, fired at Josie and then turned the gun on herself. But there are some inconsistencies and the Glendale police, in the person of the middle-aged Sergeant Lenhardt and his subordinate officer Infante, need to clear these up before the crime can truly be filed away as solved.

I reviewed the book version in an earlier issue of Mystery Women and praised it highly then. In this audio version my admiration has grown. Having to listen at the pace of the reader one appreciates the breadth and complexity of the writing. The narrative spreads out to include not only the history of the three girls’ doomed friendship but the acute psychological analysis of all the many characters who have played a part in the genesis of the tragedy and who are affected by it. Nor is it just individuals who are portrayed; the dynamics of the various families involved and the social tensions resulting from the displacement of the few long-established farming families by the arrival of prosperous bourgeois incomers are clearly and convincingly dissected.

The reading by Laurence Bouvard is excellent. In spite of the many shifts between past and present and the multiplicity of points of view there is no doubt as to who is speaking and when, although to English ears maybe one or two of the characters sound a bit like escapees from the Yogi Bear cartoon series. A more serious quibble is that Josie’s father whom we are told several times was born in the United States surely would have had an American accent not an Indian one. But this is a minor point. The Power of Three is as much a powerful and compelling tale in its audio version as in the printed version, and well worth the nine or so hours it takes to listen to the 10 tapes right through.

Other audio books by Laura Lippman: By a Spider’s Thread, Every Secret Thing, In a Strange City, The Last Place and The Sugar House.
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Radmila May