The Girl in the Green Raincoat | Review

Lippman's crime fiction novel The Girl in the Green Raincoat follows the story of pregnant and bed-ridden P.I., Tess Monaghan. Bored and overly curious, Tess uses binoculars to begin spying on a well put together woman who walks her dog at a park. One day when the green-coated lady fails to make her daily appearance, Tess assumes the worst and begins enlisting the help of her partner, friends, and colleagues to investigate what she thinks is a mysterious disappearance. Following the typical crime-novel formula, Tess' hunches are indeed correct and in the end she is able to solve the mystery.

While the plot of the story has potential, I find the lack of character development diminishes the overall value of the novel. Lippman fails to use imagery and in my opinion, the story-line falls way short of exciting. When I read a crime novel, I want to feel anxious and excited about the finale where resolution is found; this novel did not meet my expectations in that area.
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I give this book a rating of 6/10 and here’s why:
Text: The language is informal and to me, sounds like it was just thrown onto the page.
Dialogue: This part was believable since much colloquial language is used.
Plot: While at first I was mildly interested, I did not see any growth or development in the characters, which is crucial to my enjoyment of a story-line.
Characters: They lacked depth of personality, which left me without any reason to like or hate them.