Her inability to look beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people–including the man who shares her bed, a black police officer who cares for Maddie more than she knows.Everyone wants to feel that he or she has an impact on the world or to have just one other person believe – no, know – that what he or she does is important, which is featured heavily in Laura Lippman’s new superb stand-alone novel, Lady in the Lake.Įlegantly written, the novel moves with an eye to how people adapt to changes in culture, or maybe how an evolving culture causes shifts in people. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her.
Maddie’s investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life–a jewelery store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. Cleo’s ghost, privy to Maddie’s poking and prying, wants to be left alone. Maddie’s going to find the truth about Cleo’s life and death. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie–and the dead woman herself. Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time.
Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl–assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake. Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. This year, she’s bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife.
In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know–everyone, that is, except Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz.
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