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Having just finished her morning workout, and on the cusp of her next book tour, for her 26th novel, “Murder Takes a Vacation� — her first cosy mystery — Lippman was her bright, generous, extroverted self, buoyant in conversation about her childhood influences, the writing life and the potential joy of third acts.

The touchstones that formed her as a novelist, Lippman said, include Maud Hart Lovelace, the author of the Betsy-Tacy books. “More than any other writer I read as a kid, reading these books, in which a young girl in the early 20th century wants to be a writer and everyone around her is matter of fact about accepting her dream — that helped normalized the job for me,� she said. She also really identified with “Harriet the Spy� because, like Harriet, she was “walking around the neighbourhood, wanting to know everybody’s secrets.�

Most emotionally influential is Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby, a character Lippman admitted was her “literary soul sister.�

“She’s one of the greatest female characters in all of literature,� Lippman said. “There is Emma Bovary and there is Ramona Quimby. She has such a range of emotion, she makes mistakes, and life is so unfair, and she’s trying to do right.� Unsurprisingly, the only time Lippman ever asked to do something personal on a book tour was while visiting Portland, Ore. She insisted on stopping at the sculptures of Ramona, Henry and his dog Ribsy in the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden.

Lippman grew up watching “Perry Mason� with her grandfather and realized that when she started on her first novel, 1997’s “Baltimore Blues� — featuring private eye Tess Monaghan — she was writing an inversion of the TV series in which “somebody got killed, and they were awful and there were so many suspects.� Instead, she thought, “What if there’s an awful person and what they get murdered for is one of the more morally ambivalent things they’ve ever done?�

“Murder Takes a Vacation� puts front and centre a character from her Monaghan series, Mrs. Muriel Blossom, Tess’s assistant. “Muriel is definitely good company,� Lippman said, “and I chose to write the novel, in part, because I wanted to spend time with a character I could really like. It’s been a while since I could say that about any of my books. She’s a blast. I adore her. But it’s the hardest book I’ve ever written.�

Part of the challenge for Lippman were the exacting demands of a cosy mystery, which require an amateur sleuth to root for, a charming setting (what could be more charming than Paris in the spring?), a lighthearted tone and a lens focused on the puzzle to be solved, rather than on violence — very different from a thriller or a private eye novel.

“It’s like a form of poetry that’s beautiful but rigid� — perhaps a sestina or a sonnet. And, although she has read cosy mysteries throughout her life, she said, “I think it’s the old cliché: dying is easy, comedy is hard. I think noir is easy and cosies are hard.�

One of the other things Lippman didn’t know about writing a cosy mystery, she said, was “you need a big enough cast so that there can be red herrings. I needed more fleshed-out people to populate the novel because it was too small of a world. So that’s what I added on the first major revision.�

A widow for 10 years, and a recent lottery winner, 68-year-old Muriel is treating herself to a trip to Paris and a cruise along the Seine with her best friend Elinor as her guest. The opening sentence, “Mrs. Blossom had never been upgraded in her life,� is reminiscent of the opening line of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway� because, Lippman said, “I was listening to Michael Cunningham’s ‘The Hours’� — about Woolf writing “Mrs. Dalloway� — “while I was writing it, and its rhythm is in the DNA of the sentence.�

Both characters are independent women of a certain age, accustomed to being invisible, and Lippman was motivated to show Muriel that “she should take up more space. She should not be embarrassed or restrained in any of her appetites, or ambitions, or desires — that she is as entitled as anyone to what life has on offer.

“Even in this third act,� Lippman continued. “And she has to stop holding herself back and stop behaving as if she’s not worthy, whether it’s a nice scarf or a great trip. But also, she’s realizing she’s entitled to new friends and love and sex and desire.�

What Lippman knew for certain was “whatever happens, Mrs. Blossom will save herself.�

In April, Tomorrow Studios announced its acquisition of Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series with Lippman and fellow crime novelist and veteran showrunner Megan Abbott (“The Deuce,� “Dare Me�) attached as writers.

“We have so much road in front of us,� Lippman said. “Megan and I have spent a lot of time brainstorming, where we might want to go with this and how it might work. I kept wanting to say in pitch meetings, what if Jim Rockford had a granddaughter who lived in Baltimore? That’s what Tess is like. She’s not quirky and she has no special powers, but she’s a good person who’s rooted to the ground. But things don’t always go right for her.

“We’ve optioned the material so I’m getting paid and Megan’s getting paid,� Lippman added. “But now we need a studio to finance it.� Previously, her novel “Lady in the Lake� was adapted into a limited series starring Natalie Portman for Apple TV Plus. For that show, Lippman said her involvement consisted of giving the producers her blessing: “I thought, no, I’m not going to tell you all what to do. I want to write books.�

“Murder Takes a Vacation� is a balm. Surprisingly, one of its inspirations is E.L. Konigsburg’s beloved 1967 children’s book “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,� a favourite of Lippman’s because “there’s a beautiful passage in it about the importance of secrets.� There is a secret that drives Mrs. Blossom’s story and in the end it remains untold.

For Lippman, “when a writer leaves things unsaid, it creates this beautiful space for the reader’s imagination.� Like her protagonist, Lippman is a woman in her 60s, living a life she did not expect, realizing that her third act — after being a reporter and a noir novelist — could be the best one yet.