Lady in the Lake takes us back to 1960s Baltimore where we come face to face with the blatant unfairness of societal norms. Your race, religious beliefs, and gender, ultimately decided what doors were open to you and what doors you wouldn't even consider trying to open. Maddie Schwarz is a typical housewife and mother, who decides to push the boundaries by leaving her husband and son and her safe, secure, and boring life behind. She hopes to discover who she is as a person, one not defined by her parents, or friends, or family, but rather by her hopes and dreams.
Two events are central to Maddie's story, Cleo Sherwood( the Lady in the Lake), and Tessie Fine( a missing young girl from a good family). Maddie finds one body and becomes obsessed with discovering the truth behind what happened to the other. Fate or luck or sheer determination land Maddie a job at a newspaper and she is determined to be more than an office girl. In her quest to secure her dream job, she interviews many people about Cleo. No one seems to care about a murdered black woman(except Maddie), though her investigation uncovers more than Cleo might have wanted to be known about her life.
Many different POVs are used to tell the story. If Maddie talks to a bartender, the following chapter will be told from his POV and I found it a very clever way to move the plot forward. I certainly learned more through these encounters, since what was held back from Maddie was explained in greater detail( can I say I especially enjoyed what the ghost had to say). What can I possibly say about Baltimore other than Laura Lippman's words bring the town to life, and honestly, you could certainly classify it as another character in the story.
There was nothing about Lady in the Lake that made me furiously flip pages, but that was a huge part of its charm. I am a huge psychological mystery/thriller reader, but sometimes, you just want to slow down and inhale the details from a well-crafted tale. A great beach read and the author( who I have to say, I read all of her books with pleasure) outdid herself. Highly recommended. July 25, 2019, is the US publication date. 4.5 stars.
I received a DRC from Faber and Faber Ltd through NetGalley.

This book was not for me. I got 25% in and had to stop. There were far too many characters and points of view to keep track of. Also the writing style was hard to read. It was slow and didn't engage me, I was bored . I have seen some great reviews but it did not work for me.

Fans of Laura Lippman know that the city of Baltimore is a strong character in and of itself in all of her novels and that's true here as well. Maddie Schwartz is a woman who needs to find her place in the world- or at least in 1966 Baltimore. She leaves her husband and son, moves to a small apartment, and finds herself trying to sell her wedding and engagement rings. This leads her down the path to her future. Part of a group looking for small Tessie Fine who has gone missing, she spots the girl's body. An impulsive act declaring that she's been robbed puts her in touch with Ferdie, an African American police officer who becomes her lover. An exchange of letters with the suspect in the Fine case leads her to a newspaper career and it is there that a random call to the parks department about a missing light leads her to the story of Cleo, who has been murdered and left in a fountain. There are many voices in this novel, most notably Maddie and Cleo's (although Paul Blair (!) makes an appearance as well.). I liked this as a device- sometimes the smallest player has input that will be critical later. Maddie's terrific. There's a twist I did not see coming, which was a bonus point. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. As always with Lippman, and as a native of the city, I loved the opportunity to revisit places I'd almost forgotten. And then there's the phrase "a Baltimore bachelor!" An excellent read.

I've enjoyed a number of Laura Lippman's books in the past, but this one didn't work for me at all. I found Maddie Schwartz's story boring, and all the different narrators just felt distracting to me. I'll check out her next book, but I didn't really enjoy this one.

Thanks to Faber & Faber and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I love Laura Lippman, and she has done it again, penning another Baltimore=based story involving real places, a few real people, and an intriguing storyline.

I particularly enjoyed the way this was layered. For example, if Maddie, the main character around which the story circled, visited a bartender, the next section was told from the bartender's point of view. This allowed the reader to learn more about each character than would have been offered if only Maddie's voice was used. I suppose this was a multi-person book, as it wasn't first person or third person. I found this to be a helpful device in delivering the story.

The story takes place in the 1960s in Baltimore. Maddie Schwartz, in her late thirties, leaves a comfortable marriage a pursues her lifelong ambitions to have a passionate life. She ends up finding work at one of the Baltimore newspapers after she and an acquaintance find the body of a young girl. Maddie also learns about the death of a young African-American woman, and is determined to find the truth about Cleo's life and her subsequent death.

Maddie's pursuit of a meaningful life impacts the lives of many around her, but she doesn't seem to think about consequences of her actions.

Laura Lippman has hit a homer with this book, which is a fitting comment due to the Orioles' success in 1966. I highly recommend this book!

Two socially and ethnically different women are at the center of the story. Maddie Schwartz abruptly leaves her husband and teen-aged son to pursue a career as a newspaper reporter. Cleo Sherwood disappears without a trace leaving behind two young sons. How their lives intersect is told in a complex manner through the eyes of those who knew/know each woman. Many of the chapters are narrated by the myriad of different characters (policemen, waitress, bartender, politicians, family members, salesclerk, a medium, small-time gangsters, reporters to list a few) and the action flips back and forth in time so you need to pay attention. Over the course of a year, the unexpected happens more than once and there are several believable twists which I will not reveal. Fans of Ms. Lippman will be delighted to meet a couple of specific characters (and I will not reveal those either) as well as being enveloped by the aura of Baltimore in the 60s.

Is it a thriller? From the moment you step into this book, you are just confused. Several characters are introduced within a matter of pages and each of them have different tenses to contend with. It feels as though a couple of entirely different stories have been welded together to create one book and it's not one that I can get on board with.

To start with, I have heard of Laura Lippman but have never read any of her books. The beginning of the book was a bit confusing to me as each chapter was voiced by a different character. After a bit, I was able to determine who was who and picked up on the book's flow.

This historical fiction has a reporter want-to-be as the central character intertwined with two murders. Maddie's investigation prowess was a bit lacking due to her greenness. However, her tenacity shines through. There are steps and missteps along the way, which resulted in not expected results.

I am not a prude nor do I have a problem with interracial relationships. I think the author spent too much time on Maddie's sexual relationship.

I quickly read this book even though it was not as captivating as I would have like.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for an advance copy in exchange for an honest feedback.

this was not one of my favorite of her books, i chose it to read because of the author, i am not fond of historical fiction though this was from 1960 so not so long ago, but the style was old fashioned, meaning why could the writin g and the thinking be sharp even if older. It was an ok story but again, disappointing. I was tempted to not finish it, but did

I have read a couple other books by Laura Lippman that I enjoyed, so I was looking forward to reading this book too. I have to say that this was my least favorite of hers that I've read. This was a crime novel, but it seemed more like historical fiction, so expectations may have had something to do with it. I did enjoy hearing the perspective of all the different characters. Thank you to Netgalley and Faber & Faber for allowing me to read this early in exchange for an honest review.

I have a confession to make. . . this is my first Laura Lippman book. For someone who reads as much as I do, particularly as many thrillers as I do, this is quite a feat. I'm not sure where I went wrong in my life, but I'm SO glad I decided to make better choices because WOW. Lady in the Lake blew me away. What I thought was going to be another run of the mill thriller was 100% not that and instead a beautiful, haunting story set in 1960's Baltimore.

While this novel revolves around several crimes, I wouldn't call it a crime novel exactly. It is a compulsively page-turning recreation of Baltimore in 1966: a time when racial tensions were high, when desegregation was still in process, and a time when the experience of being a woman was drastically changing -- in the workforce, in the home, in the world. Maddie leaves her comfortable, wealthy existence with her husband and son because she wants more out of life than just being someone's wife and mother. When she stumbles upon a young murder victim's body, Maddie goes to work for a newspaper and becomes entwined in several murder investigations.

At heart, this is the story of a woman fighting to make her place in a world that, while changing, is not quite ready for her. The narrative style is unique, told by Maddie about half the time, and interspersed with chapters told by just about every peripheral character you meet. I've seen some reviews saying they found this style confusing, but I loved it and didn't find it hard to follow in the slightest.

This was a solid 4.5 star read for me. I'm solidly on the Laura Lippman train now and can't wait to read more by this talented author. Lady in the Lake comes out next Tuesday, July 23rd. A huge thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my e-ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars (rounded up to 4). A quick read for the summer.

Set in 1960's Baltimore, Maddie Schwartz, a recent divorcee after almost 20 years of marriage, noses around to help the police solve a missing persons case. She then lands a job at the Star, a local newspaper, where she chases a story to try to solve the case of a missing womans' body that was found in the local fountain.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I really did like the narration style where you get inside the head of many different characters. That was great to get a "real time" perspective from a different character's POV on the same events. A good read for the summer.

Thank you Laura Lippman, Faber & Faber, and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

#NetGalley #LadyInTheLake

Maddie has been the model upper middle class Jewish housewife of 1960s Baltimore. After a visit from a former classmate, she realizes she wants something else. She leaves her husband and son (who chooses to stay with his father) with hopes of realizing her dream of becoming a newspaper reporter. A chance finding of the body of a missing child provides her first opportunity to try to realize that ambition. A further investigation into the life and death of a young black woman leads Maddie into making some questionable choices while attempting to further her career.

This book is written using an interesting style that I liked. The story alternates between third person account of Maddie and her actions and first person accounts of the various other characters she encounters. The author does a good job capturing the culture and tone of the 1960s. It took a while to build up the story and all of the characters and then the resolution wrapped up very quickly. Unfortunately, I think I lot of readers might find Maddie a rather unlikable character.

er having read Sunburn by this author, I was excited for this new book. I requested an egalley from Netgalley but was declined by the publisher. A week or so later, the book was then offered as "Read Now" to all Netgalley members, so I got the ARC anyway.

I did enjoy this, though not as much as the previous book. What I like about both of the Lippman books I've read are the main characters: both women start out furiously but by the end, I liked them both.

My biggest issues with this were with the formatting of the ARC. There were splits in off places and so it made for some confusion in the beginning as to why certain events had taken place. For example, early on, Maddie, the main character, decided to leave her husband. This seems to be a result of a dinner guest her husband invited over. Maddie knew him when he was younger and she makes several remarks throughout the story that she never would've left her husband if that hadn't happened. She had known him in high school, but he was a minor player in the book and I never did see how the two events correlated.

Also, this is a murder mystery, obviously, and there are a lot of viewpoints we are shown, which is a plot device I generally enjoy. However, the odd breaks made this confusing in places and some of them just seemed superfluous.

All in all, a fun read but I thought it got a little heavy-handed in places. I thought the epilogue was a bit annoying and gratuitous, but since this is about a fictional character, I guess it just served to wrap things up.

Actual Rating: 3.5 stars
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
Current ebook price: $12.99
Opinion of Price: I would borrow it from the library
My Cost: $0.00

The farther I read into this book, the more I liked it. It takes place in Baltimore in the 1960s. I was a little confused by the opening which was the comments of a dead black woman describing seeing Maddie Schwartz with her husband Milton, a lawyer (he looked like his father who the writer had known and liked). Maddie is the main character, who has a very complicated personality. As the story progresses, we find out more and more about Maddie.

Early in the story we see the wife of a lawyer, Maddie, takes care of the house and her son easily, and who effortlessly puts on a dinner party at the last minute for her husband. However, the man her husband has invited, Wallace Wright, was a man Maddie knew in high school (and went to the senior prom with) who had become a well known TV commentator. Wallace was in love with Maddie, but they had had only that one date. That night she thinks about her first love (who her parents didn't know about). She decides to leave her husband on November 30 twenty days after her thirty-seventh birthday.

Maddie is having some money problems on her own, and tries to sell her wedding ring. The jeweler offers her only $500, but it was insured for $2000. She goes home, puts the ring deep into one of her plants, created an appearance of chaos, and runs out to the street screaming for help. A black patrolman (Ferdie) rushes to her. He puts in a call for her, buys her a soda, and walks her home. He tells her it isn't a good neighborhood for her to be in. Two weeks later he's broken her lease and she moves to better apartment and Ferdie helps her break in her new bed. He continues to visit at night over most of the book. As the story goes on we hear more about Maddie's younger life, when she wasn't a boring but beautiful lawyer's wife.

Maddie needs a job and wants to do something important. She gets a job at the Star newspaper, helping out the man on the help desk. When a young girl goes missing, Maddie and the jeweler's sister Judith go looking. Near the end of the arboretum hours, Maddie decides to go to the last trail (perhaps she remembered going parking there), where they find Tessie's body. Maddie decides she should help the police solve Tessie's murder, although she still doesn't get a byline. She interviews the suspect, and finds out he had an accomplice. Later, she begins trying to solve some of the problems brought up by writers to the help column. After someone complains about the lights not working at the fountain in Druid Hill Park. She calls DPW, and they find the body of a black woman, Cleo Sherwood, who has been frozen in the fountain for some time. Maddie finds out she had worked at a black nightclub and goes to interview the family and the nightclub. However, it appears that Cleo doesn't want Maddie interfering.

At the end the story skips to several years later and we find out what has happened with Maddie, Cleo, and Ferdie, as well as the two murderers. Maddie is again a successful woman.

"Alive, I was Cleo Sherwood. Dead, I became the Lady in the Lake.."

Set in Baltimore in the mid ‘60s, Lady in the Lake tackles some of the prominent issues of the era such as racial discrimination, women’s role in society and gender inequality. It is also a story of women trying to make a better and happier life for themselves, forbidden love and secrets.

The story begins with a haunting, mysterious, and foreboding prologue that left me excited about the book and full of questions that I couldn’t wait to have answered.

Told by multiple narrators, the two women whose stories are the focus of this novel, are also the narrators we see the most. Cleo Sherwood is a single mother who is trying to get ahead and create a good life for herself and her two sons. She had moved out of her parents house leaving her boys there, although she visited regularly, and was working in a local bar. She disappears on New Year's Eve after being seen on a date with a mystery man but no-one other than her family seem to care.

Maddie Schwartz is the typical beautiful and perfect housewife but she feels bored and trapped. She leaves her husband after almost two decades of marriage and is trying to start again, which for her means an exciting relationship with an unsuitable man and getting a job as an assistant at a local newspaper. When Cleo’s body is found she becomes determined to find out what happened to her despite warnings that not only does no-one care, but she will get herself and others hurt if she pursues it. Wanting not only justice but her name on a story, she decides to ignore the warnings and continue her investigations.

The story unfolded in a way I didn’t expect but really enjoyed. I liked that I could never figure out who had killed Cleo and that most of the twists took me by surprise. I loved the historical aspect of the book and the author had me immersed in the era, especially when reading the parts narrated by Maddie and Cleo.
The abundance of narrators did sometimes feel too much, but most of them did give a perspective that added to the story and gave you possible clues so I could see a reason to give them a voice. The chapter narrated by Cleo’s eldest son was particularly heartbreaking and I was in tears reading it. It was a great reminder of Cleo as a mother as that side of her was overlooked by most people as they chose instead to focus on the more salacious side of her character to paint her in the light that suited them.

I’ve wanted to read a novel by this author for a long time so I was thrilled to have the chance to review this ARC and I can’t wait to read more of her work. Lady in the Lake reminds us how difficult it was for women of any race to make a better life for themselves outside of the social conventions in a time not so long ago. An intriguing and alluring novel that I would definitely recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley, Faber & Faber and Laura Lippman for the chance to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This was good but not the page turner I was hoping for. I was expecting more of a mystery but it read more like a character driven human interest story. The ending felt contrived

I really enjoyed this book. It took me a little while to get in, but I was hooked once the mystery kicked in.
I liked the writing and the historical aspect of it, as I love historical fiction. The mystery, the twist were a good bonus.
I'd read from Lipman again.
Thanks a lot Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

I LOVED this book. I loved the way the story was told. I loved the picture it conjured of a time when so much was different and yet so many of the struggles that the characters went through are still alarmingly relevant today. I loved the way it was about so many things, race and gender and what stories are, how who tells them shapes what we consider important. I loved the different voices interspersed with Maddie's story, the different perspectives they gave. And I loved Maddie herself. She isn't a 'nice' woman. She's willing to pursue what she wants at others' expense, to use her looks and charm to get her way. And that's what makes her so wonderful. Struggling against the constraints of the society she was born into, she makes her life her own. And I loved her for it.

One of my favourite books of the year so far. Highly recommended.

When her husband invites home for dinner a man she knew in high school, 37 year old Maddie is jolted out of her comfortable world of being a Jewish housewife and mother to a teenage son. It's 1966, Baltimore is changing and Maddie wants to be out in the world, living. She moves out, gets an apartment and a secret lover and decides that she wants to become a journalist. But she's too old and the wrong gender to get a job at a newspaper the traditional way, so when the disappearance of a little girl gives her an opportunity, she grabs it. But when her dream job turns into her being a glorified secretary, she finds another missing persons case to dig into, a woman whose body is found dumped in a public fountain. But Maddie is an outsider just learning her job there are people who have a vested interest in keeping her quiet.

Maddie is a fantastic character. She's by turns yearning and manipulative, honest and willing to do what it takes to get what she wants, independent and insecure. I'm not sure I'd like her if I met her, but she is a fascinating person to follow around.

Laura Lippman is that rare kind of bestseller writer, the kind that is constantly improving their work. She's always been good at putting together a suspenseful plot and paired that with solid writing, but she's been expanding her reach. Yes, this is set in Baltimore, as most of Lippman's books are, but this one deals with both Civil Rights issues and political corruption. There's a lot more depth here than usual and Lippman is up for it, writing a crime novel that works well in its genre, while also providing a novel rich in historical detail and nuanced characters.