Love Laura Lippman and this book was another excellent read. I loved the setting/era, I enjoyed the pace the story was told at. This book really explores a lot of heavy topics and I enjoyed watching the main character evolve.

Baltimore, 1966. After 20 years of marriage, Maddie and her husband have separated.
Now living on her own, the community has gone a buzz with the news of a missing girl. Maddie teams up with a family friend to find her. As the evening is darkening, they take a last ditch effort and look in a little known spot within the park. To their horror they find the young girl dead. With this tragic event, Maddie is introduced to a handsome member of the police department and an old reporter for the city newspaper.
With determination and a no fear attitude, Maddie persuades the reporter to hire her at the Star newspaper. To her dismay it is at the lowly starter position. Never to be defeated, she knows that a big story will come along for her. Cue in Cleo. Cleo is a free-spirited single mother, who's dead body was found in a fountain - and now aptly named "Lady In The Lake". With some help from her newly formed relationship with Baltimore's finest, Maddie unravels the mystery of "Lady In The Lake",
**I have to admit that it took me about 80 pages to get into this book, but once I was in, I could not put this book down. This is a fantastic and unique book. Told through alternating perspectives as well as Cleo's haunting dialog, you can't help but get drawn in. 3 stars.

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman takes place in Baltimore in 1966. Maddie Schwartz is 37 years old and unhappy with her life. She leaves her husband and starts working at a newspaper. The world is very divided.

The story is told by many voices. It goes between Maddie and the people she meets every day. Maddie finds herself writing about two local murders. The murder of an 11 year old white girl and a young black woman. She cannot understand why the story of a local young black women who is found in a lake is not a bigger story. She continues to investigate and ask questions.

This is a story of a woman who is finding herself and becoming who she wants to be. Her life up to this point has been what everyone expected from her.

Thank you Netgalley and Faber & Faber for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Mystery & Thrillers
Release Date: July 25, 2019

This was my first Lippman. I love seeing how Maddie evolved throughout the book and loved her strong female character that she turned into. Taking place in the 1960's that could not have been easy nor common. This book had everything you need for a mystery and kept you entertained. Definitely recommend.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book!

This historical mystery is a bit of a departure for Laura Lippman. Maddie Schwartz is trying to figure out what she really wants in life. That leads her to make choices that send her down an interesting path. Maddie was an interesting character. In some ways, I was rooting for her to find her way, but she made other decisions that made me question her choices. I loved the historical elements weaved into the story. Ms. Lippman did a wonderful job building the world of 1960s Baltimore. The book is told from multiple viewpoints, but, unlike some books, it wasn't confusing to follow the various voices, and they added to the overall story.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“Lady in the Lake” by Laura Lippman, William Morrow, 352 pages, July 23, 2019.

In 1966, Baltimore housewife Maddie Schwartz leaves her lawyer husband, Milton, to pursue a career in journalism. She is surprised that her teenaged son, Seth, decides to stay with his father.

When young Tessie Fine disappears, Maddie and another woman search for her and find her body. While Maddie is hired by a newspaper, the Star, her job is to answer questions for a help column.

Maddie thinks her big break is the case of Cleo Sherwood who
disappears without a trace leaving behind two young sons. When Maddie answers one of the complaints sent in to the column about lights not working in a fountain of a park lake, it leads to the discovery of Cleo Sherwood’s body.

Maddie is first told by her editors that no one is interested in the death of a black woman. People who she tries to interview don’t trust her enough to talk.

Cleo Sherwood was a young woman who liked to have a good time. Her ghost isn’t happy that Maddie is investigating. Chapters alternate between Maddie and a random person involved with the events of that chapter. At the same time, Maddie begins an affair with a black policeman.

Laura Lippman is the author of 17 other books. I like her Tess Monaghan series, but I didn’t like Maddie. She is very self centered, single-minded and narcissistic. Because she led such an insulated life, Maddie is truly clueless about the lives of the people around her. This really isn’t a mystery; it’s more of a novel of self-discovery.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, the advance reader's edition of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a review.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley!

Per usual, Laura Lippman instantly draws you into her world on page one. Lady In the Lake takes places in 1966 in Baltimore. Maddie has finally decided to live her life for herself and leaves her husband. She starts to work for the Star. She becomes fixated on a murder case that no one else seems to care about. This book follows her through trying to solve that case.

The author just drew me in with her writing from the first page. I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to all

I wanted to like this book, I really did. The description sounded great, but as I read the book, it didn't live up to my expectations. There were too many characters in the book and not all of them were needed. They didn't add to the story and instead made the plot drag along. The main character didn't do too much for me, either. Overall, it's not a book I'd recommend to family or friends to read.

<b>4 very enthusiastic stars!!! This was my first book of Laura Lippman's and it definitely won't be my last. I can't think of anything I didn't like about this book. </b>

It's Baltimore in 1966 and Maddie Schwartz has decided she is done playing by the rules and wants to start living her life. She leaves her husband and moves to an apartment downtown. She finds herself in the middle of a police investigation and from that point on she gains a focus of what she wants to do with her life. She begins working for the Star, one of Baltimore's newspapers and immediately decides that she is not going to settle for being someone's assistant. She wants her own column and she does almost anything she can (sometimes at her and other's around her's expense) to research a murder that no one seems to care about. A young, black woman was found dead in a nearby lake. The community has moved on from this, but Maddie refuses to let go. It is through this investigation that we follow Maddie, and many other POV from the various people she meets by way of her investigation.

I can see why some people had trouble with the way this book was laid out. We hear from almost everyone Maddie encounters (even if for only a brief chapter), which in my opinion, helps flesh out the story even more than if we had read it all from Maddie's perspective. I thought it was also a good avenue into the insight of the time and place - not only did we see the world through Maddie's eyes, we saw it through different races, socioeconomic backgrounds, professions, genders, etc. So this aspect of the book was a total win for me.

I also found the story extremely interesting and inspiring. Was Maddie my favorite character in the world? No. But who cares? She had a dream and she chased it. I highly recommend giving this a chance it you have any interest in newsroom/reporting, mystery, the 60's, or women's fiction.

I want to thank Netgalley, Faber & Faber and Laura Lippman for the opportunity to read and provide an honest review of this book. I was particularly touched by Ms. Lippman's author's note.

Review Date: 7/21/19
Publication Date: 7/23/19

Maddie Schwartz had everything, Money, a husband, a teenage son.
Cleo Sherwood was a black woman in Baltimore in the 1960s. She worked hard but made choices that led to her working in a nightclub and later disappearing.

Lady in the Lake is a historical fiction novel about race, sex, murder, politics and being a woman in the 1960s in American. Maddie knows there is more to life that being a housewife and makes a series of choices that lead to her working on a newspaper and investigating deaths in her town. From the death of young Tessie Fine, Maddie proves that she will do anything for a story - despite how she is treated by her male colleagues.

Cleo just wanted to be loved. She loved her kids but knew the best thing was to leave them with her parents. She was a woman in love. And throughout this book. Cleo oversees Maddie's investigations and wants her to stop. She doesn't want the truth to be revealed.

Laura Lippman creates tension and suspicion excellently. Each part of this story reveals a little bit more and more to the story, opening up the mystery of the Lady in the Lake like one of those corpse flowers that blooms slowly and then all at once reveals itself, and it's ugly truth.

Thanks to netGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

In Lady In the Lake 1960s Baltimore we meet housewife Maddie Schwartz. She leaves her husband, son and home to pursue her old goal of becoming a reporter. Along the way she rekindles her passions and helps solve two murders, one of a white girl, the other of a young black woman for whom she seeks justice. The story unfolds with different voices speaking. Laura Lippman has written a clever and engrossing novel.

First I would like to thank Faber & Faber and Netgalley for this ARC.

I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery. I followed Laura Lippman for her Tess Monaghan series and after reading this I am not sure why I fell away from her books.

The main character, Maddie Schwartz is in the middle of a midlife crisis. She wakes up one day and realizes her life as a wife and mother is not enough. Maddie moves on into a fight to become a newspaper columnist. No small fete for a woman in the 1960s.

Maddie is smart, resilient and in so many ways experiencing life in a whole new way. I have a tough time going from there because I don't want to spoil the author's good work of weaving a story for the readers.

One part I really enjoyed - was how we heard from so many of the characters in first person. Even minor ones that really added to the story.

I highly recommend this book to all mystery readers.

I was pulled in by the premise of this one, but I couldn't get into it.. Perhaps it's because I didn't find the main character, Maddie, to be sympathetic. I got the impression that that was the idea, that Maddie was suppose to be selfish and insufferable, but I found it off-putting and wasn't enjoying myself, so it was easy to put down. It took me longer to read this book than any other book in my life. I only finished it in order to provide a review, but had I borrowed it from the library, I would've simply returned it unfinished.

I really enjoyed this story about a woman working her way up as a reporter at a local paper. This is the main story line that many others branch off of. In fact, even the Lady in the Lake herself felt like a subplot to the story of Maddie. And that was too bad because it, along with the occasional chapters with points of view from random other people throughout the book, led to a feeling of being disjointedness. I would have liked the focus to have been more on Cleo. Like her murder, she was always second priority below the white woman, Maddie. But despite the little interruptions from other characters, the story was interesting and did a good job of reflecting the turmoil of the 1960s.

My Rating: 3.5 stars

This was an interesting read, one that I felt was quite a departure from the traditional thrillers I’m used to reading. Right off the bat, we know that a death has occurred, a woman’s body found at the bottom of a fountain, the titular “lady in the lake” from whose first person perspective it seems the story will be told. But then, the story switches to that of another woman, Madeleine “Maddie” Schwartz, a housewife who seemingly has the perfect life, but is actually restless and bored and is thinking about leaving her marriage. Determined to be a reporter, Maddie takes up a job at the local newspaper, but because she is a woman with no media experience to speak of, she is assigned to do menial, seemingly unimportant tasks. At first, it is hard to figure out what the connection is between Maddie’s story and that of the dead woman — a connection made more difficult to understand as alternating chapters are narrated by each of the different characters that Maddie encounters throughout the story. Some of the characters who “speak” seem to have nothing to do with the story, while others actually provide insight into the life — and death — of the woman in the fountain, whom we learn is an African-American woman named Cleo Sherwood. In a slow-burning but well-written narrative, we bear witness to Maddie’s journey of “self-discovery” as she grows to understand what it is she truly wants in life and, in her attempts to achieve her goals, how her actions impact those around her. Along the way, more of the mystery surrounding Cleo’s death is revealed bit by bit, culminating in us (as readers) eventually learning the truth as the two story arcs converge.

Overall, I enjoyed this book well enough, though the structure of the story did take some time to get into, not just because of the many characters that shared in the narration of the story, but also the general slow pace of the plot, which, for me at least, made it not work too well as a mystery / thriller. In a way, this book would also fit into other genres such as historical fiction, as the story actually took place in the 1960s and in addition to addressing some of the societal issues prevalent during that time period (such as segregation and racial prejudice against African-Americans as well as women’s rights and their roles in society), some of the events in the story were also based on real-life events (which the author talks about in her author’s note at the end of the book). While the story did sustain my interest throughout (for the most part), some sections did drag a little — given these aspects, plus the “unique” format of the narrative, I can understand why the reviews for this book have been a mixed bag. For me, this is my first time reading one of Laura Lippman’s works and I ended up liking this one enough that I would definitely consider reading her other works, whether new or backlist.

Received ARC from Faber and Faber via NetGalley.

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.