Listen In Audio highlights from a conversation between PG Book Editor Bob Hoover and author Laura Lippman, who has just published the newest installment in her Tess Monaghan series, "No Good Deeds."   The plot explores the idea that there's a human being behind every headline   Twenty years of newspaper reporting has helped Ms. Lippman as a novelist   How Ms. Lippman uses her experience as a newspaper reporter   Finding the right writing environment on the road Meet the author Laura Lippman will be at Mystery Lovers Bookshop, 514 Allegheny River Blvd., Oakmont, Friday at 7 p.m. Call 412-828-4877 for reservations.

Laura Lippman's journey from journalist to author of a chain of best-selling crime novels is a familiar tale to Pittsburgh readers.

They've been hearing it since 1997, when she first came to Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont. She'll return again Friday to push her 11th title, "No Good Deeds" (Morrow, $24.95).

It's a good-luck thing, said the longtime Baltimore resident.

"The Oakmont store is very important to me," Lippman told the Post-Gazette in 2001. "[Owner] Mary Alice Gorman was one of the early believers. She got behind me when nobody had heard of me."

That first book, "Baltimore Blues," introduced reporter-turned-private eye Tess Monaghan. With eight more Tess books and two other novels to her name, Lippman no longer has a recognition problem.

She clearly doesn't have writer's block, either. Reached last week in Milwaukee in the midst of a nationwide book tour, she said she was planning to spend part of her day writing in her hotel room.

"I can write on planes, I can write in hotels, I can write in Starbucks," Lippman, 45, said. "That's one of the great things about having worked in a newsroom. I don't need a completely silent retreat from the world. As a matter of fact, I like working in a place that's buzzy like a coffeehouse. All I need is my laptop."

She calls her approach to writing mysteries "the distant-shore school of writing."

"I set up the initial problem, I think about what possible solutions are and then fill in all the ground in between," she explained.

"I feel like I'm on one side of the river bank and I can see the other side and I've got to get there, but the journey's different every time. You just don't know what it's going to be like to cross that river."

Lippman's work ethic keeps her pounding away at her computer as well, she said, because her books go through so many drafts.

"My first draft is sort of an outline. It's barely written in English. It's very flat and stark. I just try to get the floorboards of the story in, then I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite."

All that work has its benefits, Lippman said.

"As you rewrite, you can take advantage of all that omniscience you've developed, so it becomes easy to layer in the various subtle clues and hints you want the reader to know about. With each draft, you can really fine-tune it."

Another benefit is that it keeps the writer from getting too complacent, she added.

"I've decided to turn my weakness into my strength. Because my first drafts aren't good enough, I can't show them to people. The advantage to that is that I can't coast, that I have to work hard. For that reason, I never procrastinate."

Lippman ended her 20-year newspaper career several years ago, leaving the Baltimore Sun with few regrets.

"I don't miss newspapering, she said. "I did it for 20 years and I like to think I did it pretty well. But temperamentally, I'm better suited to the life of a novelist. I don't like working for other people."

And, while Lippman defended some of her previous bosses, she's now certain that she's "the best boss I ever had. I'm so nice to me."